In a feat to make gaming a more accessible and enjoyable experience for all gamers, Microsoft has officially announced their new speech-to-text and text-to-speech feature for Xbox party chat! At present, the features are being tested via the program called “Xbox insider” 

The speech-to-text feature will pop up and window on your screen with automated transcriptions of what other players are saying on the voice chat and also shows you if they’ve typed it or spoken it. This feature will help Gamers who are hard of hearing will be able to easily participate in the chat regardless of if other players have spoken aloud or typed what they had to say.

On the other hand, the text-to-speech feature works the other way around where gamers typed messages are read out aloud for the rest of the members, you’re playing with to be able to hear. What’s more, is that users also have the option of picking from a myriad of different voices to better customize what their voice sounds like to the rest of the party.

Earlier this year Microsoft made the Xbox adaptive controller to assist gamers with a wide range of motor abilities. This is all a part of Microsoft’s feat to push accessibility with Xbox so it’s great to see them continue this especially with the new voice chat feature!

You can enable the features by going to Settings > Ease of Access > Game and chat transcription, or by going to Options > Ease of Access settings while in a chat if you are an Xbox insider.