Speech Recognition Plays a Role in Google’s Accessibility Initiative

Google has announced new updates aimed at making its technology more accessible.

A new Android developer tool called Accessibility Scanner is designed to highlight for developers ways in which they can make their offerings more accessible, such as by pointing out how increasing text contrast could improve readability. Meanwhile, on the user end, with its forthcoming Android N operating system Google is putting its Vision Settings options on the Welcome activation screen so that users can immediately improve readability as necessary.

But it is perhaps with Google’s speech recognition technology where the biggest technological improvements to accessibility are being made. Every new Chromebook will come with an upgraded ChromeVox screen reader, with the ChromeVox Next Beta sporting features like Braille output. And of course Google Docs now enables voice command dictation and formatting, as well as JAWS screen reader compatibility. The company has also just launched a voice command system for Android specifically designed to replace the touch-based user interface with voice command—it’s called Voice Access Beta.

While Google’s heavy investment in voice-based technology R&D offers clear market advantages as voice interaction becomes increasingly prominent on connected devices, it’s clearly having considerable payoffs in the area of accessibility too, alongside Google’s other new efforts.

Source: Google Official Blog

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(Originally posted on Mobile ID World)