Use a screen reader to add a new room mailbox in the Exchange admin center

This article is for people with visual or cognitive impairments who use a screen reader program such as Windows Narrator, JAWS, or NVDA with Microsoft 365 products. This article is part of the Microsoft 365 screen reader support content set where you can find more accessibility information on our apps. For general help, visit Microsoft Support.

Use the Exchange admin center (EAC) with your keyboard and a screen reader to add a mailbox for conference rooms. We have tested it with Narrator in Microsoft Edge and with JAWS in Chrome, but it might work with other screen readers and browsers as long as they follow common accessibility standards and techniques.

A room mailbox is a resource mailbox that's assigned to a physical location, such as a conference room, an auditorium, or a training room. Users can easily reserve these rooms by including room mailboxes in their meeting requests.

1. On the EAC dashboard, press the Tab key until you hear: “Left navigation pane, expanded.” If you hear "collapsed" instead of "expanded," press Spacebar to expand the menu before continuing.

2. Press the Tab key once. You hear the item currently selected in the left navigation pane. Press the Up or Down arrow key until you hear "Recipients, expanded," and press Spacebar. 

3. Press the Down arrow key until you hear "Resources," and press Enter. The Resources list view opens, listing all available resources in a table.

4. Press the Tab key until you hear "Add a resource," and press Enter. The New resource mailbox dialog box opens. The focus is on the Close button.

5. Press the Tab key until you hear: "This is a choice group, Room, radio button." If you hear "Equipment" instead of "Room," press the Up arrow key once. You are now ready to fill in the basic info for the room.

6. To name the room, press the Tab key once. You hear: "Name, edit." Type a descriptive name.

   Tip: The name will appear in the users' Outlook Address Book. To make the room easier to find, use consistent naming within your organization.

7. To assign an email address to the room, press the Tab key until you hear "Resource email, edit," and then type the username part of the email address that comes before the @ sign. Press the Tab key until you hear "Select domain," and press Spacebar to expand the domain list. Press the Down arrow key until you reach the domain you want to use, and press Enter.

   Tip: To add domains to the domain list, contact your Microsoft 365 admin. You can't type additional domain names into the domain list.

8. You've now filled in the required info for the new room mailbox. If necessary, you can fill in the optional details for the room capacity, location, and phone number. Press the Tab key until you hear the option you want, and then type the value for the option.

9. Press the Tab key until you hear "Next button," and press Enter. A new page for optional organizational address info opens. To browse the options on the page, press the Tab key or Shift+Tab. You can type the info you want into the text fields or select a value from the drop-down lists.

10. Press the Tab key until you hear "Next button," and press Enter. The Booking options page opens. You can now define optional booking options for the room, for example, to auto-accept meeting requests or allow repeating meetings. To browse the options, press the Tab key or Shift+Tab. You can type the info you want into the text fields or select the necessary checkboxes.

11. Press the Tab key until you hear "Next button," and press Enter. The Review resource page opens. You can now check the room mailbox details before creating the mailbox. To navigate and read the contents of the page, with JAWS, use the Down and Up arrow keys. With Narrator, press the SR key+Right or Left arrow key. If you need to make changes to the details, press the Tab key until you hear "Back button," and press Enter to return to the previous page.

12. When you're ready to create the mailbox, press the Tab key until you hear "Create button," and press Enter. The mailbox is created.

    Tip: It can take a few minutes to create the new mailbox. You do not hear any additional feedback during this wait time.

13. To return to the resources list, press the Tab key until you hear "Done, button," and press Enter.