What you must know
- Google introduced new accessibility options for Android and different providers on Thursday, Could 16 as a part of World Accessibility Consciousness Day.
- There are a complete of eight new options that span Android, Google Maps, Lookout, and extra.
- Particularly, Google Maps is getting simpler to make use of for these dwelling with disabilities, because the app’s Lens perform now has display reader capabilities.
Immediately is World Accessibility Consciousness Day, and Google is saying a number of new options that goal to make its services and products extra accessible to all. There are eight in complete, and these new accessibility options come on the heels of Google I/O 2024, the corporate’s annual developer convention. At that occasion, Google shared that Gemini AI might be used to enhance TalkBack on Android. Now, we all know extra about how Google goes to enhance the accessibility of a few of its different providers, like Google Maps and Lookout.Â
The primary is one thing known as “Discover mode,” and it’s a new performance added to Lookout. For these unfamiliar, Lookout is an Android function that helps folks with low imaginative and prescient or blindness use their cellphone’s digital camera to be taught extra concerning the world round them. Beginning in the present day in beta, Discover mode will make it potential for customers to seek for particular objects or locations through Lookout. Customers can choose one in all seven classes of locations, like restrooms, and be told of their path and distance to the place.Â
Google can be including a brand new choice to Look to Converse, a function that lets customers set off pre-written phrases to be spoken aloud with their eyes. Now, there’s a substitute for textual content, as you’ll be able to choose emojis to speak. The corporate says it is supposed to make Look to Converse extra accessible to folks throughout languages, literacy challenges, and cognitive variations.Â
Challenge Gameface, an experimental software program that lets customers management their cursors with head motions and facial expressions, is rolling out to Android this week in one other transfer.Â
A few of the greater adjustments come to Google Maps, which is able to grow to be extra accessible for folks with low imaginative and prescient or blindness. For starters, Lens in Google Maps now has a display reader, so the app can inform you the title and particulars of areas round you. It is rolling out this month to each iOS and Android customers of the Google Maps app.Â
Google Maps additionally has extra details about the accessibility of enterprise and locations you would possibly need to go to. The corporate says it has data for 50 million locations, and customers can view accessibility particulars within the About tab for a spot, like whether or not it has an accessible ramp or restroom. For theaters and showrooms, there’s now an Auracast help possibility that may be displayed to indicate compatibility with Bluetooth listening to aids.
There are a number of extra accessibility options coming to Android, too. Challenge Relate permits customers to create a customized speech recognition mannequin that may assist folks with non-standard speech be higher understood. Sound Notifications will inform you that an essential family sound is occurring, like a hearth alarm, by means of push notifications, flashing lights, and vibrations.Â
These adjustments are all rolling out now or quickly, and they need to assist make Android and different Google providers extra accessible. For World Accessibility Consciousness Day, different tech firms are additionally debuting new accessibility options, like Apple’s Eye Monitoring for iPhone and iPad.Â
