Kategorie: Android

To blind traveling bluesman Joshua Pearson, songwriting is more than just a good melody. “Songwriting gave me a language to talk about my frustrations. And by putting my music out there, I could hopefully let somebody else feel some of what I was feeling.” For Joshua, TalkBack is his main pen and paper for writing songs; it lets him dictate lyrics into his phone and hear them told back to him.

Screen readers, such as Android’s TalkBack, are the primary interface through which Joshua and many other people who are blind or low vision read, write, send emails, share social media, order delivery and even write music. TalkBack speaks the screen aloud, navigates through apps, and facilitates communication with braille, voice and keyboard input. And today we’re releasing an all-new version of TalkBack that includes some of the most highly requested features from the blind and low vision community.

Tap as you please with multi-finger gestures

We’ve added a dozen easy-to-learn and easy-to-use multi-finger gestures that are available with the latest version of TalkBack on Pixel and ​Samsung Galaxy devices from One UI 3 onwards. These gestures make it easier for you to interact with apps and let you perform common actions, such as selecting and editing text, controlling media and finding help. 

We worked closely with people in the blind and low vision community to develop these easy-to-remember gestures and make sure they felt natural. For example, instead of navigating through multiple menus and announcements to start or stop your favorite podcast, it’s now as simple as double tapping the screen with two fingers. 

Read or skim with just a swipe

Reading and listening is easier with new controls that help you find the most relevant information. For instance, you can swipe right or left with three fingers to hear only the headlines, listen word-by-word or even character-by-character. And then with a single swipe up or down you can navigate through the text. 

Say what? There’s new Voice Commands 

Starting with TalkBack 9.1, you can now swipe up and right to use TalkBack’s new voice commands. TalkBack will stop talking and await your instructions. With over 25 different commands, you can say “find” to locate text on the screen or “increase speech rate” to make TalkBack speak more quickly. 

Do things your way with more customization and language options

While we put a lot of thought into this redesign, one thing we’ve learned from working with the community is that everyone interacts with their phones in their own way — which makes customization important. You can now add or remove options in the TalkBack menu or reading controls. Additionally, gestures can be assigned or reassigned to scores of settings, actions and navigation controls.

Lastly, we’re adding support for two new languages in TalkBack’s braille keyboard: Arabic and Spanish.

Joining forces for accessibility

The all-new TalkBack is the result of our collaboration with trusted testers and Samsung, who co-developed this release. ​TalkBack is now the default screen reader on all ​Samsung Galaxy devices from One UI 3 onwards, making it easier to enjoy a consistent and productive screen reader experience across even more devices.

To help everyone keep up with all the changes, we’ve created an entirely new tutorial to make it easier to make the most of TalkBack — there’s even a test pad to practice new gestures. With these new features and collaborations we hope that more people can find useful and creative ways to use TalkBack. Who knows, you might even find lyrical inspiration like Joshua. 

In 2018, we launched Voice Access, an Android app that lets you control your phone using your voice. The ability to use your phone hands-free has been helpful to people with disabilities, and also those without.

Today, on International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we’re rolling out an updated version of Voice Access, available in Beta, that is easier to use and available to more people. This version of Voice Access, which was previously available on Android 11, is now available globally to devices running Android 6.0 and above. 

Thanks to machine learning and a refreshed interface, it’s easier to use your voice to control your phone. Previously, Voice Access would draw numbers over your phone screen so you could   say commands like “tap 1,” “scroll down on 5” and so on. With the new version, you can ask for labels instead of numbers.  Say „show labels” and use them to voice commands so it’s easier for you to remember and use again later.

This update also adds new commands to help you get things done faster in your favorite apps. Instead of saying “tap search” and then “type kittens,” you can simply say „search for kittens“ inside YouTube, Photos and many other apps where you’re looking for a kitten fix. 

When you first install or upgrade to the new version, you can choose to have Voice Access start whenever you use your phone  Or if you like, you can just say  „Hey Google, Voice Access“ when you need it.

Voice Access was designed for and with people with motor disabilities (like ALS, spinal cord injuries or arthritis). But it’s also helpful for anyone with a temporary disability, like a broken arm, or whose hands are otherwise occupied, like if they’re cooking. Regardless of the reason, the updated Voice Access app makes it easier for anyone to use their phones hands-free! 

You can download Voice Access on Google Play and try the new version out by joining the Beta today. 

Appliances beeping. Water running. Dogs barking. These are all sounds that are meant to grab your attention when something important is happening. But, if you have hearing loss or are wearing headphones, these sounds might not be able to draw your attention like they’re intended to. 

Sound Notifications is a new feature on Android that provides push notifications for critical sounds around you. Designed for the estimated 466 million people in the world with hearing loss, Sound Notifications makes important and critical household sounds more accessible with push notifications, a flash from your camera light, or vibrations on your Android phone. This feature can also be helpful if someone is unable to hear temporarily as a result of an injury, wearing earplugs or headphones.

Sound Notifications works with other devices, including Wear OS by Google smartwatches. You can get text notifications with vibrations on your wrist when there is important noise detected by your phone. That way you can continue to get alerts about critical sounds even when you are asleep, a concern shared by many in the deaf and hard of hearing community.

Developed with machine learning, Sound Notifications works completely offline and uses your phone’s microphone to recognize ten different noises—including baby sounds, water running, smoke and fire alarms, appliances beeping and door knocking. This expands our sound detection work in Live Transcribe which shows over 30 sound events alongside real time captions, to provide a better picture of overall sound awareness.

While we can notify you about baby sounds or dog barking, it often helps to know more about the preceding events that might have caused that disturbance. With the Timeline view, you can scroll through a brief snapshot of detected sounds from the past few hours. This shows when and how long the sound occurred to get a better sense of the sound’s importance. So if the dog has been barking because of a siren heard before that for 10 minutes, you can see that.

To start using Sound Notifications, go into Settings, then the Accessibility menu and enable Sound Notifications. If you don’t see this option on your phone, you can download both Live Transcribe and Sound Notifications from Google Play, then go to your settings and turn on Sound Notifications. To learn more about using Sound Notifications, visit the help center.

In 2013, I joined Google’s Central Accessibility Team. Since then, I’ve continuously worked to include people with disabilities across all of the work that we do at Google. October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, a time to celebrate and recognize the contributions of people with disabilities. Today, we’re sharing a few ways we’re continuing to support hiring people with disabilities and how we design products for and with the one billion people in the world with disabilities.

Building a helpful workplace with new career resources 

In the United States, only 19 percent of people with disabilities are employed—leaving employers with a largely untapped talent pool. We need to do more to encourage the employment of people with disabilities, and we want to support that change at Google. Through the years, we’ve evaluated and iterated on our own processes to help improve disability inclusion and awareness in the workplace. Doing so has helped us build a more diverse team of people with different backgrounds and experiences that is more representative of the people using our products. 

We know that one of the first steps to finding a job at a new company is visiting their Careers website, but those resources may not be designed with people with disabilities in mind. This is why we’ve launched a dedicated Google Careers resource page that is specifically tailored toward what a job seeker with a disability might find helpful. Prospective candidates can find career resources and tips for applying, as well as read stories about Googlers with disabilities and our employee-led Google Disability Alliance community. The page also highlights the work we’re doing to create products with and for people with disabilities. 

Action Blocks makes communication more accessible

Earlier this year we launched Action Blocks, an Android app designed with people with cognitive disabilities in mind that allows you to create customizable home screen buttons to navigate your device. Today, we are beginning to roll out an update to Action Blocks that will help make communication more accessible for people who are non-verbal.  

People who are non-verbal often use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to communicate with those around them. Updates to Action Blocks make it more familiar for anyone who uses an AAC device to communicate.

You can now use a quick setup process to create Action Blocks that speak common phrases. For instance, you can set up your blocks to say, “yes,” “no,” or “Excuse me, I have something to say.” 

Action Blocks also comes loaded with thousands of Picture Communication Symbols from Tobii Dynavox’s library, which is commonly used on other AAC devices to communicate efficiently using pictures and symbols assigned to blocks. Having a similar set of icons available makes using Action Blocks’ AAC features more familiar for people who use Tobii Dynavox technology. 

Action Blocks works on Android phones without any additional hardware, making communication more convenient and accessible to people whether they are on the go, without their AAC devices, or don’t have access to an AAC device. And it’s now available to more people with expanded language options such as French, Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese. 

In addition to AAC functionality, if you prefer to use physical adaptive switches—which can make it easier to navigate assistive technology—you can now assign a switch to an Action Block. This way, you can tap a physical button to easily trigger a Google Assistant action on your phone—such as making a call, watching a video or controlling a home device like a thermostat. To learn more about using Action Blocks, visit the help center. 

We believe designing for and with people with disabilities means building better products all around. Today’s announcements are a few steps forward in the journey to make the world a more inclusive place for people with disabilities.