In our world today, not that everyone is able to use/interact with the exiting technology, for instance; the disabled. According to World Health Organization, about 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability, of whom 2 – 4% experience significant difficulties in functioning.
Meaning that, they will have a disability during their lifetime, which can make it hard for them to access and interact with technology, and limits the opportunity that technology can bring.
Late last week, social media giants, Facebook Inc. announced that it wants to build technology that would help the blind community experience Facebook the same way others are enjoying it. The company continued to state, that people across the world share more than 2 billion photos across their platforms that the blind can’t be able to see.
That’s why it’s so important to build more tools to make technology accessible to everyone from people with visual impairments who need screen readers or larger text, to people with motor restrictions that prevent them from interacting with a touch screen, to people with hearing impairments who cannot hear their device’s sounds and also to those that are blind.
On Monday 11th, 2016, American multinational technology company, Google announced that they have made some updates to make their technology more accessible.
They company made some improvements for the visually impaired in Android N. After the recent announcement of the Android N for developers, google is bringing vision settings to Android N, which will let people control settings like magnification, display size, font size and TalkBacks to the welcome screen that appears when people activate the new android devices. This means that someone with “Visual Impairments” can independently set up their own device minus being helped in one way or another.
They also have a new built-in screen reader, ChromeVox, in Chromebooks, that will enable those with visual impairments to navigate the screen using text-to-speech software.
According to the company, the newest version, ChromeVox Next Beta, includes a simplified keyboard shortcut model, a new caption panel to display speech and Braille output, and a new set of navigation sounds.
Google Docs now allows typing, editing and formatting documents using voice commands. For example, “copy” or “insert table”, making it easier for people who can’t use a touchscreen to edit documents.
The company now has voice commands on android devices. Recently, they launched a “Voice Access Beta Application” that allows people who have difficulties with manipulating a touch screen due to cases such as: paralysis, tremor, temporary injury or other reasons to control their android devices by voice.
You can now be able to navigate around the phone, or interact with the screen by saying “click next” or “scroll down.”
To download, follow the instructions at the this link.[related-posts]
