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Live Transcribe

Google Releases New Android Accessibility Features

Google rolled out a slate of upgrades for Android designed to make the operating system more comfortable for those with disabilities to use. Google widely released Action Blocks, which combine pre-set Google Assistant commands and shortcuts into a single button or voice command, and added new features to the Voice Access, Live Transcribe, and Sound Amplify apps.

ACTION BLOCKS

Android Action Blocks take any tasks that Google Assistant can carry out, chosen from a list or entered by hand, and brings them together into a single button on the device’s home screen. Users can put a custom image on the button as a way to help those with cognitive disabilities remember what it does. Google started testing Action Blocks in October, but they are now an option on any Android device. read more

Google Announces New Accessibility Features from I/O 2019

Google announced a few new accessibility features that should make smartphones and Google services even easier to use.
Google Lens text-to-speech
While demoing Google Lens for Google Go, the search app for entry-level devices, Google revealed that the app will be able to read any text aloud and even translate it into the user’s native language. The code needed for the feature supposedly measures 100KB, so the feature can be included in very cheap smartphones. Google gave a practical example of what that might mean for people who struggle to read: read more

Google Launches Live Transcribe App for the Hearing-Impaired

The Android Accessibility team announced the Live Transcribe app for deaf and hard-of-hearing users. The app is currently being tested on the Play Store and will be pushed to all Pixel 3 users in the next update.

While Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) has been around for a while, it has grown increasingly sophisticated over time through deep learning. These improvements have culminated in Live Transcribe, a new accessibility feature that’s powered by Google Cloud, letting hearing-impaired users follow along with a conversation happening around them in real-time. You can read about the finer nitty gritties of this technology over at the Google AI blog. read more

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