Google introduced the roll out of latest synthetic intelligence (AI) and accessibility options to Android and the Chrome browser on Thursday. The Mountain View-based tech big launched these options on the event of the World Accessibility Consciousness Day, noticed on the third Thursday in Might. The corporate has added Gemini capabilities to the alt textual content description characteristic and is now increasing the Expressive Captions characteristic, which was solely accessible within the US. Moreover, the Google Chrome browser can be getting two new accessibility options to assist these with low imaginative and prescient.
Google Introduces New Accessibility Options
In a weblog put up, the tech big mentioned that it’s rolling out new updates to Android and Chrome to create customised experiences for imaginative and prescient and listening to. Moreover, Google can be including new sources for builders constructing speech recognition instruments.
Beginning with Android, the tech big is introducing a brand new characteristic and increasing the opposite to extra customers. Final yr, the corporate built-in Gemini-powered capabilities into TalkBack, Android’s display screen reader, enabling it to generate descriptive captions for pictures with out various textual content (alt textual content). Now, this characteristic is being expanded: customers is not going to solely hear alt textual content descriptions of photographs however may ask questions in regards to the pictures themselves. Moreover, the characteristic may even let customers ask questions on their display screen.
In December 2024, Google launched Expressive Captions to Android within the US. A part of Dwell Captions, this AI-powered characteristic provides a brand new format to raised convey the context behind the sounds. The corporate mentioned these subtitles will be capable of talk issues like tone, quantity, environmental cues, in addition to human noises.
As an illustration, the characteristic will write “noooooo” as an alternative of “no” when the speaker mentioned it emphatically, more likely to present disappointment (assume Darth Vader saying “no” in Star Wars: Episode III). Or it’ll write “amaaazing shot” when a commentator is worked up about a fantastic play in a recreation of Cricket or Soccer. Expressive Captions is now being rolled out in English in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US on units working Android 15 and newer.
Google Chrome can be getting a few new accessibility options. Earlier, the desktop model of the browser didn’t help display screen readers for scanned PDF information. Now, the corporate is altering that by including optical character recognition (OCR). Chrome will now be capable of recognise scanned PDFs, spotlight, copy and search, and even use display screen readers to learn them.
The second characteristic is dubbed Web page Zoom. It will probably enhance the scale of the textual content in net pages in Chrome on Android, with out affecting the web page’s format. This characteristic is aimed toward those that have low imaginative and prescient and like to learn bigger fonts with out having to maneuver the web page left and proper time and again.
