Sarah Sarsby 3rd June 2024
To give disabled people a better experience when using its products and services, technology giant Google has announced eight accessibility updates that it is rolling out.
Accessibility updates for Android devices
Lookout
The Lookout app on Android helps visually impaired and blind people use their phone’s camera to get more information about the world around them. Google has rolled out, in beta, Find mode, which claims to provide a new way for users to find specific objects.
Users can select from seven categories of items — like seating and tables or bathrooms — then as they move their camera around the room, Lookout notifies them of the direction and distance to the item. If the user captures a photo directly within the app, they will receive an AI-generated description of the image and learn more about the images they take.
Look to Speak
With the Android app Look to Speak, users can select pre-written, customisable phrases with their eyes and have them spoken aloud. The app has now rolled out a text-free mode.
With this mode, the user can also select and personalise emojis, symbols, and photos to activate speech. Google says this new feature is based on feedback from the community to help make communicating more accessible with cognitive differences, literacy challenges, and language barriers.
Hands-free cursor for Android Developers
Last year, Google released Project Gameface, an open-source, hands-free gaming mouse, on PC. Google’s latest update allows developers to access Project Gameface for Android devices via Github. With the help of Accessibility Service for Android and Google MediaPipe, developers can build applications that let users customise facial expressions, gesture sizes, cursor speed, and more.
Expanded accessibility features in Maps
More detailed walking instructions for users and descriptions about the world around them
For visually impaired and blind people, Google has expanded detailed voice guidance and screen reader capabilities for Lens in Maps to Android and iOS globally in all supported languages.
With screen reader capabilities for Lens in Maps, the user will hear the name and category of places around them — like cash machines and restaurants — and how far away a place is so they can quickly orient themselves and decide where to go.
When a person is walking and cannot see their phone, detailed voice guidance provides audio prompts to let them know when they are heading in the right direction, crossing a busy road, or being rerouted if they have gone the wrong way.
Enhanced accessibility updates
Maps now has accessibility information for more than 50 million places, Google underlines. The wheelchair icon in Maps indicates a place with a wheelchair-accessible entrance with more details about accessible toilets, parking, and seating under the About tab.
The wheelchair icon was previously available worldwide on Android and iOS mobile devices and is now expanding to desktop. Now, when users are viewing a place on mobile, they can filter reviews to easily find helpful information about wheelchair accessibility.
Find places that can cast to hearing devices
For those in need of hearing assistance, business owners can now add the Auracast attribute to their business profile. Auracast broadcast audio allows venues — like cinemas, gyms, and places of worship — to broadcast enhanced or assistive audio to visitors with Auracast-enabled Bluetooth hearing aids, earbuds, and headphones. Further information about adding this can be found here.
New designs for Project Relate and Sound Notifications
Customised teaching in Project Relate
In 2022, Google launched Project Relate, an Android app for people with non-standard speech, which allows users to create a personalised speech recognition model to communicate and be better understood.
Custom Cards allows users to customise the phrases it teaches the model, so it understands words that are important to them. Now, there is a new way for users to select text and import phrases from other apps as Custom Cards, like a note in a Google Doc.
New design for Sound Notifications
Sound Notifications alerts individuals when household sounds happen — like a doorbell ringing or a smoke alarm going off — with push notifications, flashes from the person’s camera light, or through phone vibrations.
Google says it has redesigned Sound Notifications based on user feedback, improving the onboarding process, sound event browsing, and making it easier to save custom sounds for appliances.
TBI Rehabilitation 