In its blog post, the Skype team says it has focused on areas of the service that needed the most attention. Working with customers’ needs in mind, the team says it is using feedback to improve accessibility: “For the next updates to Skype, we are focusing on Mac, iOS, Windows Desktop, and Android. Although there are still more fixes and improvements to come, the Skype team has been focusing on the following areas: improving visible keyboard focus, eliminating cases where keyboard focus moves to non-actionable controls, ensuring keyboard focus moves back to the controls that opened a dialog or menu after the dialog or menu was closed, improving the accessible names and labels of controls, and improving the control types used.” For users who need Skype’s accessibility features, they can share feedback and ideas with the team through Microsoft’s UserVoice. For an early look at the changes, opt in to the Skype Insider community for early builds
Skype Functionality on Older Android Devices
Early this month, Microsoft made an important change to Skype that allows the service to run on older Android software. Hundreds of millions of users are on older Android versions, and many of them will never be on the latest builds. It is a major problem for Google that Microsoft may be able to take advantage of. By optimizing Skype for low end hardware, Microsoft is ensuring the app can be used by people on older Android versions. This opens the service to potential customers in emerging markets, where older Android builds are common.
