Google brings new accessibility features to Android and Chrome
In honour of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Google is rolling out a bunch of new AI and accessibility features for Android and Chrome. Last year, Google brought Gemini's capabilities to Talkback, the built-in screen reader tool for Android designed for people with no or low vision. In a blog post, the tech giant says that it is now expanding the Gemini integration, allowing users to ask questions and get responses about images.
For example, when a friend texts you a picture of a guitar, Gemini powered Talkback will give you a description of the image and also answer follow up questions about things like the make and the colour, as well as see if anything else is in the image.
Google is also rolling out a new feature called Expressive Captions, which offers real-time captions for anything that has a sound. The AI powered functionality works with almost all apps and can even show labels for sounds which means it captures the way people say things. For example, if someone shouts 'nooo' or says 'amaaazing' in a sports match, Expressive Captions will be able to identify the tone.
The functionality is currently rolling out for those living in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. However, you will have to set your primary language to English and have a device running Android 15 or newer.
As for Chrome, scanning a PDF document is now easier than before. Previously, screen readers did not work with PDF files, but now Google Chrome uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to scan the text in the file, which means they can be read by screen readers. Google is also making the Page Zoom Chrome more useful than before. Also, users will be able to zoom in to text without affecting the appearance of the webpage. Users can now use a slider to enlarge the text, and modify the setting for one page or choose to apply it to all websites.
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