Out now, June’s Xbox system update includes some new party chat accessibility improvements “to help gamers who are deaf or hard of hearing and/or cannot or choose not to speak”. But let’s take a moment to remember the difference between intentions and reality.
According to Xbox Experiences manager Jonathan Hildebrandt, the update adds speech-to-text and text-to-speech conversion features, available in the Xbox settings menu under “Ease of Access” or in your party chat options.
“At Team Xbox, we believe gaming should be inclusive, approachable, and accessible to everyone. That includes making it easy for gamers to play and communicate together. Party chat, used by gamers around the world to talk to their friends while playing, now supports converting speech into text and text into speech. Each of these features can be used to help gamers who are deaf or hard of hearing and/or cannot or choose not to speak.”
The update also includes new Xbox App and custom group features, and improvements to family settings so you can review cross-network play requests to your kids from xxSexyGurl69xx:
- The Xbox app on Android and iOS keeps you connected to your gaming community. With the app, gamers can easily share their game clips and screenshots, chat with their friends, track their achievements, and even play games from their console with remote play. Over the course of this month, you will start to be able to see official posts from your favorite games. The posts are viewable from the app homepage and you can like, share, or comment on them. Stay tuned for more updates to the Xbox mobile app in the near future.
- Groups let you create lists in the guide for quick access to your favorite games and apps. Now there’s a new “Move groups” button built right into the “My games & apps” screen in the guide, letting you customize the order of your groups. To use it, open the guide, select My games & apps, and then select Move groups to rearrange your groups.
- Family settings on Xbox empowers you to decide how people interact with your family’s gaming. We continue to innovate family settings on Xbox to be as unique as families are today and support their needs. To that end, we’ve made it easier on your console to review and approve your kids’ requests to play with people on other game platforms and Windows PCs. Kids who use Xbox child accounts as part of a family group can now ask for their parent or caregiver’s approval to play games like Minecraft with others who play on other gaming services. Parents can approve or decline their kids’ request using the Xbox Family Settings app on Android or iOS or right from the console.