Bottom line: Microsoft said either of these features (or both enabled at the same time) tin help deafened or hard of hearing gamers or those who cannot speak participate in Xbox Party Chat without any special accommodations from other members of the chat.

Microsoft is well ahead of the curve in terms of supporting disabled gamers thanks to products like the Xbox Adaptive Controller, merely Redmond knows there are opportunities to meliorate.

Starting today, Xbox Insiders can try out a couple of new Xbox Party Conversation features. When enabling speech-to-text transcription, all words spoken past people in your party chat will exist converted into text and displayed in an adaptable onscreen overlay.

Conversely, enabling text-to-speech synthesis will take your typed words and accept them read by a synthetic vocalization to the rest of the people in your political party in your pick of voice.

Microsoft has offered similar functionality in Game Conversation for a few years now, but this is the outset time the functionality has been applied to Party Chat.

Microsoft notes that the features can also be useful for diagnosing microphone problems or differentiating game sound from chatters.

Insiders who want to effort out the new functionality can caput to the settings menu and look for the Ease of Access department under Game and chat transcription.