Microsoft Teams to roll out new features: All details inside

The Microsoft Teams ‘Sign Language View and always-on captions in meetings’ feature will roll out soon in December and it will be available for the general public on platforms like Mac and desktop first.

To bring sign language in Teams meetings, the feature will help users to priortise two other users’ videos. These videos stay visible even while content is shared and set captions to stay on across all meetings. This feature may arrive on mobiles anytime soon due to the limitations of the display size of these devices.

Apart from this, Microsoft Teams is also expected to receive some other features and developments. The company plans to add emoji reactions to the Teams chat which would include more than 800 emojis.

Meanwhile, a report by Axios earlier this month said that technology giant Microsoft has laid off around 1,000 employees across several divisions. Now, Microsoft has confirmed the lay offs. In its updated report, Reuters quotes a Microsoft spokesperson saying that “Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities regularly and make structural adjustments accordingly. We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead.”

The company had said in July that a small number of roles had been eliminated and that it would increase its headcount down the line. The layoffs affected less than 1% of Microsoft’s total workforce of around 221,000 as of June 30.

Microsoft has become the latest U.S. technology company to cut jobs or slow hiring amid a global economic slowdown. Several technology companies, including Meta Platforms Inc , Twitter Inc, and Snap Inc, have cut jobs and scaled back hiring in recent months as global economic growth slows due to higher interest rates, rising inflation and an energy crisis in Europe.