Office 2010 STAMP and DAISY Accessibility Add-ins Available for Testing

Two new resources offered free of charge by Microsoft are designed to increase the accessibility of Office documents for people with sight or hearing disabilities.

The Redmond company announced the immediate availability of STAMP, the Subtitling Add-In for Microsoft PowerPoint and Save as DAISY for Office 2010, add-ins which come to compensate for impairments users might be suffering from, enabling them to be productive.

Both STAMP and DAISY are in Beta development stage at this point in time, which means that users are more than welcomed to test them and provide feedback impacting their future development.

“STAMP, the Subtitling Add-In for Microsoft PowerPoint, lets you add closed captions to the video and audio files in your PowerPoint presentations, so no one misses a word of what you have to say,” revealed Microsoft’s Holly Thomas.

“Save as DAISY for Office 2010 helps you convert Word Open XML files to the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) format. DAISY powers digital talking books and compatible software and Braille readers for people with print disabilities or limited vision. This beta supports Office 2003, 2007 and 2010.”

Not only are STAMP and DAISY free, but they’re the product of two open source projects housed on SourceForge.

This of course means that the Redmond company is also allowing users and third-party developers to grab the actual source code of STAMP and DAISY and leverage the accessibility technologies in their own implementations.

“Microsoft also announced the immediate availability of Microsoft Accessibility Tools & Training,” a member of the Office team stated.

“This online package contains free accessibility training courses for developers and an accessibility resource guide providing information about many types of disabilities and age-related difficulties and guidance regarding which accessible technology solutions can help to mitigate their effects.”

Office Home and Business 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.

Office Home and Student 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.

Office Professional 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.