New AI and Accessibility Enhancements Launched for Android, Chrome, and Beyond

As we celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we're excited to announce significant updates to our products on Android and Chrome, alongside new resources for developers working on speech recognition tools. These advancements in AI are making our digital world more accessible and inclusive.

More AI-Powered Innovation with Android

We're taking our commitment to accessibility further by weaving Google AI and Gemini into the fabric of mobile experiences, particularly for vision and hearing.

Enhancing Details with Gemini and TalkBack

Last year, we integrated Gemini's capabilities into TalkBack, Android's screen reader, which provided AI-generated descriptions for images, even when alt text was missing. Now, we're expanding this feature. Users can now ask questions about images they receive, like a friend's new guitar. You can inquire about the make, color, or other elements within the photo. Additionally, you can get descriptions and ask questions about your entire screen. For example, while browsing for sales on a shopping app, you can ask Gemini about the material of an item or check for available discounts.

Understanding More of the Emotion Behind Captions

With Expressive Captions, your Android device now provides real-time captions across most apps, capturing not just what's said, but also how it's said. We've added a new duration feature that highlights when words are drawn out, like hearing an "amaaazing shot" in a sports broadcast or a drawn-out "nooooo" in a video message. You'll also get more labels for sounds, such as whistling or throat clearing. This update is available in English for devices running Android 15 and above in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia.

Improving Speech Recognition Around the World

Since launching Project Euphonia in 2019, our aim has been to make speech recognition more accessible for those with non-standard speech patterns. We're now expanding support for developers and organizations worldwide, helping them adapt this technology to more languages and cultural contexts.

New Developer Resources

To foster a global ecosystem of accessible tools, we're offering developers access to our open-source repositories through Project Euphonia’s GitHub page. This allows them to develop personalized audio tools for research or train their models to recognize diverse speech patterns.

Support for New Projects in Africa

Earlier this year, we partnered with Google.org to support the University College London in establishing the Centre for Digital Language Inclusion (CDLI). The CDLI is focused on enhancing speech recognition technology for non-English speakers across Africa. They're creating open-source datasets in 10 African languages, developing new speech recognition models, and supporting the broader community of organizations and developers in this field.

Expanding Accessibility Options for Students

Accessibility tools play a crucial role for students with disabilities, from using facial gestures to navigate Chromebooks with Face Control to customizing their reading experience with Reading Mode. Now, when using Chromebooks with College Board's Bluebook testing app for SAT and Advanced Placement exams, students will have access to all of Google's built-in accessibility features, including ChromeVox screen reader and Dictation, along with College Board's own digital testing tools.

Making Chrome More Accessible

With over 2 billion daily users, we're constantly working to improve Chrome's accessibility. Features like Live Caption and image descriptions for screen reader users are part of this effort.

Accessing PDFs More Easily on Chrome

Previously, scanned PDFs were not accessible to screen readers in desktop Chrome. Now, with Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Chrome can recognize these PDFs, allowing you to highlight, copy, search for text, and use your screen reader to read them.

Reading with Ease with Page Zoom

Page Zoom on Chrome for Android now lets you increase text size without altering the webpage layout or your browsing experience, similar to how it works on Chrome desktop. You can set your zoom preferences to apply to all pages or specific ones.

To use this feature, simply tap the three-dot menu in the top right corner of Chrome and adjust your zoom settings.