Accessibility overview of Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a messaging and collaboration app that lets everyone in your business join the conversation, communicate and work together. Our blog contains an overview of the many accessibility features that make sure all users can have the best possible experience using Microsoft Teams.
Meet, chat, and collaborate inclusively with Microsoft Teams
Meet
Access meetings and participate from anywhere with Microsoft Teams desktop and mobile apps and Microsoft Teams on the web.
- Live closed captioning for meetings
- Blur background or use a background image free from the Teams background library, or upload and use your own
- Pin a meeting participant's video to highlight an important participant
- Dedicated chats for each meeting to keep all conversations and details in one place
- Raise your hand in a Teams meeting to stand out
- Reduce background noise in Teams meetings to avoid interruptions such as calls or messages
- Add someone, like a coworker or interpreter, to a call with the click of a button
Chat
Communicate effectively with everyone regardless of language, cognitive needs, or visual capabilities.
- Limit distractions with Do Not Disturb mode to prevent interruptions from calls or messages
- Minimise communication barriers with language translation
- Customise the reading and viewing experience for different visual and cognitive needs suited to your co-workers
- Send audio messages on Microsoft Teams mobile and use Windows dictation on Microsoft Teams desktop
Collaborate
Enable collaboration for everyone by adapting to different learning paces, motor skills, and communication preferences.
- Have documents read aloud and broken down by syllables with Immersive Reader
- Ensure Microsoft Office content is easy for all people to read and edit directly from the Microsoft Teams desktop app
- Pin chats, channels, apps, and documents for quick and easy access
- Manage notifications and set your status to let your co-workers know where you are
- Dark, light, and high contrast theme
- Zoom in and out of Teams
- Search for messages to find information quickly and easily
- Compatible with assistive technologies, like
- Screen readers
- Dictation software
- Eye control (on Windows 10)
- Voice control (on iOS and Android)
- Screen magnifiers
- Switch access (on iOS and Android)
To read the full Microsoft article, click here.
For more information on Microsoft Teams and how you can fully utilise Teams for your organisation, download our FREE Microsoft Teams PDF.
Microsoft to Retire Internet Explorer 11 for some versions of Windows 10
Microsoft announced that the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application will be retired on June 15, 2022, for certain versions of Windows 10. Legacy Internet Explorer-based websites and applications will continue to work with Microsoft Edge’s built-in Internet Explorer mode.
At the time of the announcement, the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application remains unaffected on some Windows versions: Windows 8.1, Windows 7 Extended Security Updates, Windows 10 Server SAC, Windows 10 IoT Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC), Windows 10 Server LTSC, Windows 10 client LTSC. Windows 10 LSTC may be used in devices with a long life such as MRI machines and air traffic control systems.
Microsoft Edge’s Internet Explorer mode provides built-in support for legacy websites and applications that still require Internet Explorer. Edge for instance uniquely supports ActiveX controls, a technology introduced in 1996. Legacy applications support is particularly important for enterprises, which Microsoft estimated having 1,678 legacy apps on average.
Beyond compatibility with legacy Internet Explorer applications, Microsoft quotes two advantages of switching to the dual-engine Microsoft Edge.
- Internet Explorer users will be able to enjoy the modern features regularly shipping with the Edge browsers. This includes productivity features such as Edge Collections — which allows organising ideas, or browser tab management (vertical tabs, putting tabs to sleep to increase speed by saving system resources).
- Internet Explorer users will benefit from Microsoft Edge’s agility when responding to reported security issues.
The announcement post explained:
Internet Explorer 11 packaged security updates monthly, Microsoft Edge can issue security patches for immediate vulnerabilities within days, if not hours.
Edge’s Internet Explorer mode will be supported at least until the end of 2029. This provides additional time for IT departments to transition away from legacy applications.
For more information and to read the full Microsoft FAQ article, click here.
For additional support to your IT department in transitioning away from legacy applications, contact us today.
How to run secure and successful meetings with Microsoft Teams
As a result of the pandemic, many people were asked to work from home. That's why its more important than ever to develop our remote working skills to be able to stay productive. Microsoft Teams has been, successfully used over the pandemic as people are able to securely work together online, but also stay connected. If you are a new Microsoft Teams user, or already carry out your meetings via this too. we want to make sure you're getting the most out of your license.
Here are Microsoft's Top 8 Microsoft Teams Tips:
- Connect securely with people inside and outside of your organisation: When you schedule a meeting in either Microsoft Teams or Microsoft Outlook, you are able to include the email address of your guests and MS Teams will send them an email invitation, with instructions on how to join too.
- Enable attendees to dial in from anywhere, at any time: This feature is great for attendees on the go, without access to the internet, or who prefer to dial into a meeting, Teams makes sure your meetings are inclusive. Attendees who are enabled for Audio Conferencing will automatically see dial-in instructions added to their Teams meeting invites.
- Meeting Controls gives you options: Microsoft Teams gives the meeting organiser many options when it comes to defining the roles and permissions for online meeting participants. For example, you can create a meeting lobby, which lets the organiser define when certain people are admitted to the meeting. This is very useful when discussing issues with confidentiality implications. Other features include muting participants, stopping/starting recordings.
- Face-Face conversations via Video: As a result of the many restrictions, meeting in person is likely to be impossible, so meeting online via video is the next best thing to stay connected. Seeing someone’s expression when they talk, adds so much more context to the conversation. People are encouraged to turn their cameras on during Teams meetings, as this is more engaging. If you are worried about the room you are holding your meeting in, turn on the background blur feature or a custom background.
- Only share what you need: Sometimes less is more, when it comes to Teams meetings. When sharing content in Teams meetings, you have full control over what others see. You have the ability to share your entire desktop view, or just a tab. This can come in useful when dealing with confidential, sensitive information.
- Making your mark with Microsoft Whiteboard: Microsoft Whiteboard is integrated with every Teams meeting, which allows participants to contribute via touch, mouse and digital ink...this means you don't have to be in the same room for a brainstorming session. Read our release blog on Microsoft Whiteboard.
- Never miss out on a meeting: If you are running late to joining a meeting, there's no need to worry. Meetings can be recorded in full, and shared instantly once the meeting has ended. Attendees are also able to use the transcript to find specific parts of the meeting.
- Know and see exactly what has been said: Keeping up with a conversation can sometimes be difficult, especially with the added frustrations of lagging internet...with Microsoft Teams, participants are encouraged to turn on live captions and read the real-time subtitles. This feature improves Microsoft's inclusivity, as this helps those who are hard of hearing, have different levels of language understandings and lastly, are connecting from a loud location.
Adepteq can help you utilise, and make the most out of your Microsoft Teams subscription. Contact us today to see how we can help your organisation have secure and successful meetings with Microsoft Teams.
Read the full Microsoft Article here.
Update to Microsoft 365 and Outlook for Windows connectivity...
To ensure that Microsoft meet performance expectations, they are updating the supported versions of Outlook for Windows that can connect to Microsoft 365 services.
From November 1, 2021, the following versions of Outlook for Windows, as part of Office and Microsoft 365 Apps, were no longer able to connect with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services.
If organisations do not update, they may over time, encounter performance or reliability issues. Organisations that use these older clients will almost certainly face an increased security risk and may find themselves out of compliance depending upon specific regional or industry requirements. Therefore, administrators should update older Office clients to versions of Office supported for connecting to Microsoft 365 services.
Office and
Microsoft 365 Apps |
Outlook for
Windows Version |
| Office 2013 |
15.0.4970.9999
and older |
| Office 2016 |
16.0.4599.9999
and older |
Microsoft
365 Apps for enterprise (formerly Office 365 ProPlus) |
1705 and
older |
Microsoft
365 Apps for business (formerly Office 365 Business) |
1705 and
older |
If this is something your organisation is considering in order to prevent encountering performance or reliability issues, Adepteq are able to help your organisation update older Office clients to versions of Office supported for connecting to Microsoft 365 services. Contact us now.
Transform Your Hybrid Working Experience with Microsoft Viva
Microsoft are excited to announce that all four Viva modules shared at the beginning of that journey—Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Topics, and Viva Learning—are now generally available and with the purchase of just one plan, the new Viva suite, you have access to all of them. They are also announcing new capabilities and partnerships for each module and a centralised IT admin experience.
Microsoft Viva ensures every employee is a part of their organisation’s culture, expert knowledge, personal productivity insights, and key learning resources.Viva empowers every level of an organisation to address key challenges of hybrid work and employee burnout, which is a serious, common occurrence in today's working environment.
The Microsoft Viva suite: One plan for an integrated EXP
With the Microsoft Viva suite, customers get an integrated EXP that brings together knowledge, learning, communications, resources, and insights into the flow of work.
Viva Connections: Culture and communications
Viva Connections is a curated, company-branded experience that brings together relevant news, conversations, and resources in the applications and devices you use every day—and later this month, those devices will include your mobile phone.
You are now also able to add cards for Approvals, Shifts, and Tasks from Teams into your Viva Connections dashboard.
Viva Insights: Productivity and wellbeing
Viva Insights helps improve productivity and wellbeing through data-driven, privacy-protected insights and recommendations. Microsoft are announcing expanded capabilities to help managers and team leads navigate hybrid work and to help everyone in an organisation run more effective meetings.
- New manager insights and tools will help managers and team leads stay connected with team members
- A new effective meetings experience in the Viva Insights app for Teams will help meeting organisers get personalised insights and suggestions to improve their meeting habits.
- Guided meditations from Headspace will be generally available in November 2021 in four additional languages.
Viva Topics: Knowledge and expertise
Viva Topics applies AI to automatically organise content and expertise across your systems and teams into related topics, like projects, products, processes, and customers. That content appears as topic pages and topic centers—created and updated by AI—that enable experts to cultivate and share knowledge with wiki-like simplicity.
Viva Learning: Skilling and growth
Viva Learning brings enterprise learning into the flow of work by connecting content from your organisation, Learning Management Systems, third-party providers, and Microsoft.
- See assignments from integrated Learning Management Systems to easily stay up to date on required learning.
- Search across all the learning sources connected to Viva Learning and filter by interests, provider, or duration to find the exact content you need.
- Make learning recommendations to your team and colleagues and track the recommendations you’ve made.
- Add a curated set of learning resources as a tab in your Teams channels to bring learning directly into the flow of teamwork.
If you would like to see how Adepteq can transform your hybrid working experience with Microsoft Viva, get in contact with us today. For more information about Microsoft Viva, read our launch post here.
To read the full Microsoft Viva article, click here.
In the month of November, Adepteq are excited to announce two new webinars in collaboration with Omnia- 'Supercharge your Intranet with Microsoft Viva' and 'Improve Employee Experience- The Practical Guide to a Successful Intranet'.
The first webinar will be taking place on Thursday 4th November 2021 titled 'Supercharge your Intranet with Microsoft Viva'.
With Microsoft Viva, we get superpowers to our Intranet, and we can utilise Viva Topics as a Knowledge Management system, and Viva Connections to reach our employees with the latest news and corporate information. Join Ian Loman and Omnia's Knut Relbe-Moe, while they give you an overview of how to supercharge your Intranet with Microsoft Viva and Omnia.
Microsoft Viva helps you connect with your employees through multiple apps within Microsoft Teams. While your Intranet is typically the place where you used to look for corporate information and find news, announcements, and other important information about your company.
To find out more about this webinar and to register now, click here.
The second webinar will be taking place on Monday 18th November 2021 titled 'Improve Employee Experience- The Practical Guide to a Successful Intranet'.
Join Ian Loman and Omnia's Anders Fagerlund, while they give you an overview of how to drive implementation of a successful intranet and also an overview of Omnia, a top-ranked Intranet in a box product. Omnia shows the way to a well-used intranet and a world-class Employee Experience.
In this webinar, you will learn how to design and implement an intranet that improves Employee Experience. We will take you through the process step by step and share several solution examples that are designed for the purpose.
To find out more about this webinar and to register now, click here.
Target audience
This event is primarily aimed at roles like CIO, CDO, Business developers, Intranet or Digital Workplace Managers or similar roles within organisations planning for a new intranet based on Microsoft technology.
General information
If the date and time don’t suit you, sign up anyway and we will send you the presentation and a recording of the webinar.
This webinar is free of charge and is held in English. You can participate using a web browser or a mobile app. Unfortunately, we cannot accept registrations from private email addresses (gmail, outlook, yahoo etc.).
We look forward to having you join us, please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
Have you ever wondered whether or not your Microsoft 365 data is secure and protected?
Many users sadly become victims to cyber attacks due to not knowing that Microsoft aren’t actually protecting their valuable data. Adepteq SaaS Protection makes it easier and more cost effective than ever to safeguard all of your Microsoft 365 data- putting your mind at ease.
So, what is Adepteq SaaS Protection?
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is an intelligent way to deliver applications over the internet. These SaaS apps have revolutionised the way we do businesses. It allows companies to limit installation and maintenance of software by accessing applications with a click of a button. Adepteq Datto SaaS Protection helps you to remove the risk of losing any or all of your data with a simple, automated and secure backup of your Office 365 Data.
Feeling unsecure and want to know how we can protect your data?
We’re holding a FREE Online Webinar on ‘Protecting your Microsoft 365 data with Adepteq SaaS Protection’!
Our Webinar takes place on Wednesday 22nd September 2021 from 10:00AM – 10:45AM BST.
The following topics will be covered:
- Microsoft’s backup recommendation
- The threat landscape
- How to protect your data
- Ransomware in action (demo)
- Recovering your data
There will also be a short Q&A where our experts and presenters- Ian Loman and Adam Salley will be able to provide additional support.
This webinar is free of charge and is held in English. You can participate using Microsoft Teams in web browser, desktop app or mobile app. If the date and time is not suitable, sign up anyway and we will send you the presentation and a recording of the webinar.
If you want to know how to Secure and Protect your Microsoft 365 Data with Adepteq SaaS Protection, REGISTER NOW for our Free Webinar to avoid missing out!
On August 17th 2021, Microsoft will continue the march away from Internet Explorer as Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer work when using Internet Explorer 11. Microsoft stated, those who choose to continue using these apps with Internet Explorer 11, will have “a degraded experience”. The apps and services will begin to phase out over the next few months which will ensure a smooth phase out.
Support won’t be available for people who run into issues trying to access Microsoft 365 apps and services through Internet Explorer 11. Microsoft explains that users will not be getting any new features and that the daily usage of these apps and services will get worse as time goes on, until these apps and services are permanently disconnected.
Microsoft further outlines the application experience that people will have with Internet Explorer 11 starting on August 17th 2021:
- Outlook Web App: Users logging in with AAD accounts will still receive the full OWA experience but will not receive new features beginning August 17, 2021, while users logging in with Microsoft Accounts (MSA) will be redirected to the Outlook Web App Light experience.
- Open with Explorer/View in File Explorer (SharePoint): We understand that some customers may continue to use Open with Explorer and View in File Explorer (only accessible in IE11) to access document libraries. To avoid disruption, these customers will be able to use these features for now when they go to a document library in IE11. These features remain in maintenance mode and aren’t receiving further development. We encourage all customers to move to a modern browser and OneDrive sync for a better user experience and easier access to files. For more information on how to prepare your SharePoint environment for end of support on IE11, please read this Docs article.
- All other apps and services will phase out over weeks and months to ensure a smooth end of support. Each app and service phasing out on independent schedules.
Microsoft has been clear about the end of support for Internet Explorer and for some time, Microsoft have been issuing statements to warn and advise. To continue using Microsoft 365 apps and services, then you need to migrate to a more modern internet browser solution.
Our expert developers can assist you in your migration, and provide support for as long as you need. Contact us today, to see how you can get the most out of your Microsoft 365 apps and services.
To read the full Microsoft article, click here.
The leading provider of human layer security, Egress, recently announced getting their hands on Aquilai, an anti-phishing provider with natural language processing technology and machine learning that puts all targeted email attacks, impersonation and spear phishing attempts to a halt. Egress Intelligent Email Security platforms are strengthened due to the acquisition of Aquilai.
Egress and Aquilai are a powerful combination that will provide customers with protection against all inbound cyberattacks targeting employees and real-time outbound email security for shared data, including inadvertent data loss and email encryption. Due to the increased volume and sophistication of targeted phishing attacks, security leaders need an intelligent, non-disruptive email security solution that detects multi-vector exploits and thwarts zero-day attacks. With seamless integration, Microsoft Outlook will enable organisations to effectively defend against email data loss and the increasing number of attacks targeting the 365 platform.
The acquisition will begin immediately with the launch of Egress Defend, incorporating Aquilai’s anti-phishing technology and the following key capabilities:
- Machine learning and natural language to detect all phishing attacks. Egress Defend detects and mitigates all zero day phishing attacks, including advanced threats such as BEC and brand forgery, CEO fraud and impersonation attempts, and spear phishing.
- Content and context analysis for inbound email traffic. Egress Defend detects BEC and social engineering attacks, including those utilising open-source intelligence (OSINT), to provide enhanced security versus relationship-based solutions.
- Streamlined user engagement for enhanced cybersecurity awareness among employees. Egress Defend includes traffic light warnings and insight summaries to provide active learning to educate users about the threats they face.
Egress CEO Tony Pepper comments: “Organisations face a daily onslaught of targeted attacks via email that are designed to exploit employees. By acquiring Aquilai, Egress will expand its protection over our customers’ human layer to ensure they can defend against targeted inbound attacks and outbound data loss as employees share content. I’m also personally delighted to welcome Jack Chapman as our new VP of Threat Intelligence and look forward to working with him to help our customers level-up in their fight against phishing.”
Chapman comments: “Aquilai is the perfect fit to advance Egress’ mission to secure the human layer, adding sophisticated anti-phishing capability to existing products that secure outbound content as it is shared by employees. I’m also delighted to be joining Egress as VP of Threat Intelligence to further accelerate the company’s high growth in EMEA and North America.”
As a result of the acquisition and launch of Egress Defend, the Aquilai Ajax brand will be retired from 1st June 2021.
So how can Adepteq help?
We partnered with Aquilai to provide our clients with leading edge protection against the most common (and costly!) form of cyber attack. Once we understand your environment we will provide a proposal to deploy Egress Defend to work alongside your existing defences, with licences on a per user basis.
Adepteq can provide an online demo and arrange a 10-day free Proof of Value, so you can see how Egress Defend works in your environment. Simply visit our page to arrange your online demo and to speak to our experts.
If you would like to read the full article click here.
