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[voiceover] What’s new in accessibility at Google
Hi, everyone.
I'm Laura Allen, head of strategy and programs
for Accessibility and Disability Inclusion here at Google.
Welcome back to What's New in Google Accessibility,
a series where we share the latest updates
and our work to make Google's products and features more accessible for everyone.
In this episode, we'll talk about new typefaces in Google Fonts,
updates to Android 14, our efforts to improve accessibility in the web and much more.
First up, we've added new typefaces to Google Fonts
specifically designed to make reading easier, including:
Andika, a font designed to maximize legibility, especially for new readers of all ages;
Read X Pro, an Arabic font which reduces visual noise,
making it easier for readers with visual impairments or dyslexia;
and Shantell Sans, a marker-style font in Latin
and Cyrillic built for creative expression by artist and philosopher
Shantell Martin, who's dyslexic.
We'll provide links for these fonts and more information in the description of this video.
In Android News,
we've added new accessibility features to Android 14.
Based on user feedback, we've updated Magnification,
our feature in accessibility
settings that allows users to magnify their device’s screen.
We know that some people like to magnify the entire screen,
while others may only want to magnify part of it.
You can now customize the Magnification window,
control the size and position of the partial magnification screen,
and keep the full screen magnification on when switching apps.
We've also updated the Font size settings
so users can scale text up to 200%
and access a Quick Settings tile to quickly change text size.
Scaling is now done nonlinearly - so if a font is already somewhat large,
it won't increase in size at the same rate as a small font would.
This avoids the potential for text to be cut off during resizing.
And we've added a feature called Flash Notifications that provides a visual
notification on your device using a flash from your camera, light or screen.
Previously, many users who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing
had to rely on vibration as the main way to receive notifications.
Now, Flash Notifications allow Deaf users to keep their phone at a distance
and still receive notifications.
Flash Notifications are also helpful for anyone who might miss alerts
in a noisy environment or if they need to be notified
when their phone is in silent mode.
In more Android News,
we've launched three major improvements to Lookout, our app built
with the blind in location community that uses your phone's camera
to recognize and described details about the world around you.
Lookout 4.0 now includes customizable
reading tools to adjust font size, line spacing and more.
We've also made changes to Text mode to improve speed and accuracy.
And in
response to user requests, we've added support for 11
additional languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Finally, we're very excited to announce a limited
beta release of a major new capability:
Image Q&A, now available in English in the US, UK and Canada.
Instead of relying on alt text or short captions, this feature
allows you to dig deeper and explore your own interests about an image.
Built into images mode Image Q&A uses an advanced A.I.
model to create more detailed captions
and lets users ask follow-up questions by voice or keyboard.
For example, you could ask “What's in the background?” and Lookout
will describe it to you:
“The plants are in the background”.
We've spent a long time developing this, and are excited to hear your impressions.
We’ll link to Lookout 4.0 in the description of this video
so you can give it a try yourself.
In Chrome news,
we're also using AI to improve accessibility on our web browser.
Unfortunately, much of the web's content is inaccessible for people who are blind
or have low vision like me.
And based on our internal analysis, there are more than 360 billion
PDFs online that are inaccessible for people who rely on screen readers.
Now, with the help of AI, we're creating a built in Chrome
browser feature that extracts text from PDFs.
So when someone using a screen reader comes across a PDF that does not contain
recognized text, they'll be able to extract text from the document
and their screen reader will read the words aloud.
In Workspace,
we've made some improvements to Meet, Google's app for video calls and meetings.
Our new feature, Animated Backgrounds, allows you to turn off
the incoming video of any attendees who have distracting video feeds.
This can be helpful in situations when someone wants to focus their meeting
view on just the presenter.
And we're releasing a feature called Tile Pairing,
which allows you to pair your tile on Meet with someone else's.
So when one person speaks, two people can be highlighted.
This makes meetings more inclusive
when someone's using a voice or sign language interpreter,
or when two people are presenting together.
We've also added 31 new languages to captions in Meet,
our feature that provides automated captions during meetings.
And we've added ten new languages to our translated captions for meeting spoken in English.
Available for some Workspace accounts,
Translated captions allow you to translate to and from certain languages.
Last but not least, in our messaging app, Messages by Google,
we redesigned the Messages status icons to make them identifiable for users.
We're now using two visual elements - the color of the outline
and the color inside the icon - to create a clear
and consistent visual cue for each message status.
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of What's New in Google Accessibility.
We hope you enjoyed learning about some of our recent efforts
to improve our accessibility products and features.
To learn more, sign up for our accessibility newsletter at
g.co/a11y/news
or by clicking the link in the description of this video.
Bye for now.
What's New in Accessibility at Google