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Modern assistive applications on Microsoft Windows use the platform's UI
Automation accessibility framework to interoperate with other applications' user
interfaces. Until now, Chromium has supported the older Microsoft Active
Accessibility (MSAA) and IAccessible2 (IA2) framework for this purpose, which
has led to problems with accessibility tools on Windows.

To solve this problem, Microsoft has worked with the Chrome team to support the
UI Automation (UIA) framework on Windows directly, making it easier for
accessibility tools to communicate with the browser. We'll be starting a gradual
rollout to stable, starting in Chrome version 126. This will enable Voice Access
to function in all Chromium-based browsers and will enhance the user experience
for all UIA-based accessibility tools, such as Narrator and Magnifier. This work
will also eliminate the Windows UIA emulation layer, which has been the source
of many performance issues in Chromium on Windows. However, this shouldn't have
any effect on existing MSAA or IA2 clients. Chrome will continue its support for
MSAA and IA2, making it one of a few applications that support both
accessibility APIs on Windows.

For enterprises, we're introducing a new policy,
[UiAutomationProviderEnabled](https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/#UiAutomationProviderEnabled),
to help manage the transition to UIA smoothly. This policy will be available
through Chrome version 136, giving enterprises ample time to update any tools
that were relying on the Windows UIA emulation layer.

## Report issues

We're excited to bring this improvement to our users and developers, and we know
it will make the web more accessible for everyone. [Report issues with the new
UIA support
here](https://issues.chromium.org/issues/new?component=1457002&template=0).