Google Accessibility Updates: Innovations and Features Overview

Google enhances accessibility with innovative features across its products, promoting inclusivity for all users.

### Enhancing Accessibility: Google's Latest Innovations and Features
* 🎤 Laura, Head of Strategy and Programs for Accessibility & Disability Inclusion at Google, introduces new updates in accessibility following the **Google I/O event in May**.
* 🎥 In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Google released five short videos offering tips on **creating inclusive content**, which can be found at goo.gle/accessible-content.
* 🤖 The American Fingerspelling Competition on Kaggle aims to develop a model for **identifying American Sign Language fingerspelling**, utilizing a dataset of **over 3 million characters from 100 Deaf signers**.
* 🎮 Popsign, an AI-driven educational game designed to help families learn sign language, is a collaborative project involving multiple institutions and aims to **ease the learning process for new parents of deaf children**.
* 🖱 Project Game Face introduces a **hands-free gaming mouse** that allows users to **control their cursor using head movements and facial gestures**, catering to individuals with **mobility disabilities**.
* 🗺 Google Maps has enhanced its Accessible Places feature, making **wheelchair-accessible entrances visible for over 40 million locations**, aiding users in finding **step-free access**.
* 📸 The Lookout Image Q&A mode leverages AI to make digital images accessible by providing descriptions and answers to user queries, addressing the **99% inaccessibility of images for blind individuals**.
* 📝 Chrome is rolling out features such as a **customizable Reading mode** and the ability to **increase content size by up to 300%**, improving the browsing experience for users with **visual impairments and learning disabilities**.

[light music] [voiceover] What's New in Accessibility at Google. Hi, everyone! I'm Laura, Head of Strategy and Programs for Accessibility & Disability Inclusion here at Google. Welcome back to What's New in Google Accessibility, a series where every few months, we discuss updates that make our products more accessible for everyone. In this episode, we'll share some highlights from Google I/O, which happened in May, and we'll tell you about new features we're launching and products like Google Maps, Android, Chrome, and more. In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day in May, Google writers collected some of their favorite tips for creating accessible, inclusive content. In five short videos, they offer practical advice for how to use inclusive language, create informative headings, and reduce reliance on visual cues. Find these resources and video links at goo.gle/accessible-content. At this year's Google I/O, we showcased a number of projects that are advancing accessibility technology.

First up, we announced the American Fingerspelling Competition on Kaggle. Kaggle is an online community of data scientists and machine learning practitioners. The goal of the competition is to create a model that can quickly and accurately identify American Sign Language fingerspelling - where each letter of a word is spelled out in ASL rapidly using a single hand, rather than using this specific signs for the entire words - and then translated into written text. Participants will create a model trained with the largest dataset of its kind released specifically for this competition. The data includes more than 3 million fingerspelled characters produced by over 100 Deaf signers. To announce the competition, we released a music video with a deaf musician and rapper San Forbes. We’ll link to it, along with the Kaggle Competition site in the description of this video. We also showcased Popsign, an AI-powered educational game that helps families learn sign language.

Learning sign language can be challenging, especially for new parents of deaf children who want to pick up the language quickly and fluently. Popsign will hopefully make this process a bit easier and more accessible. The project is led by the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Rochester Institute of Technology, Google Engineers, and the Kaggle community. Visit Popsign.org, and check out the I/O video linked on their website to learn more. And we shared Project Game Face at I/O, a new open-source hands-free gaming mouse that enables users to control their computer’s cursor using their head movements and facial gestures, which can be particularly useful for people with mobility disabilities. In addition to these announcements, we hosted several accessibility-themed sessions at I/O, like “What's new in Android Accessibility” and “Embrace Accessibility for more beautiful products with material designs.” You can find these and more linked in the description of this video.

In Google Maps News, we've made an update to the Accessible Places feature. Since 2020, people located in certain countries have been able to opt-in to Accessible Places, which helps identify when a place has a wheelchair-accessible entrance indicated by the wheelchair icon. Now, we’re making the icon visible for everyone on Maps for more than 40 million locations, so you can know before you go if there's a step-free entrance, which is helpful whether you're using a wheelchair, pushing a stroller, or even lugging a suitcase. You can also find other information - like availability of hearing loops, wheelchair-accessible seating, restrooms, or parking - in the about tab. On Android, we announced Lookout Image Question & Answer (Q&A) mode - a new AI-based feature that integrates a Google DeepMind visual language model to make digital images more accessible. Lookout, which was launched in 2019 and designed with the blind

and low-vision community uses AI to help people accomplish everyday tasks, like sorting mail and putting away groceries. Digital images have been found in some studies to be 99% inaccessible to blind people. Now, whether or not images have captions or alt text, Lookout can process the image and provide a description of it so people can use their voice or type to ask questions and have a more detailed understanding of what's in an image. We've invited a limited number of users to test out this feature with plans to make it available to more people soon. We're also rolling out updates to Live Caption, our AI-powered feature that provides real-time captions for anything with sound on your Android device and across your phone and desktop using Chrome and Google Meet. Good boy Chester, Are you ready to show everyone your new tricks? This summer will bring: A new captions box that optimizes the Live Caption experience on Android tablets.

New availability for a Live Caption for calls feature, allowing you to type back responses during calls and have the response read aloud to the other caller. And language expansion to French, Italian, and German for more Pixel models. On Chrome for Android, you can now easily increase the size of content - including text images, video, and interactive controls - by up to 300% to suit your vision preferences while still preserving the page layout. And you can set your preferred content size as a default so you don't have to change it every time you open up Chrome. In more Chrome News, Reading mode - our that makes reading easier and more accessible - is coming to the Chrome browser. A customizable reader view will allow users to reduce distracting elements on the screen, like images and videos to help you focus on the page's primary content. This feature can be helpful for people with learning disabilities like dyslexia. Thanks for tuning into another episode of What's New in Google Accessibility.

We really hope that you enjoyed learning about some of the latest updates to our 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. Stay tuned for another episode in a few months. Bye for now. [voiceover] What's New in Accessibility at Google.

What’s new in Google accessibility | Episode 2

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Google is launching new features and products to enhance accessibility, with highlights from the recent Google I/O.

In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Google writers shared tips for creating inclusive content through short videos.

The American Fingerspelling Competition on Kaggle aims to develop a model for quickly identifying American Sign Language fingerspelling, while Popsign offers an AI-powered game for families to learn sign language.

Making Sign Language and Accessibility Easier

Popsign, a project by the Georgia Institute of Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology, Google Engineers, and the Kaggle community, aims to help new parents of deaf children learn sign language quickly.

The Accessible Places feature on Google Maps is being updated to show wheelchair-accessible entrances for over 40 million locations.

Additionally, Android's Lookout is introducing an AI-based Image Q&A mode to make digital images more accessible for the blind.

AI Innovations for the Low-Vision Community

AI is being used to assist the low-vision community with everyday tasks, such as sorting mail and grocery organization.

The Lookout feature offers image descriptions, providing users with a better understanding of visual content.

Upcoming updates include an optimized Live Caption experience, content size adjustment in Chrome, and a customizable reading mode to enhance accessibility.

Latest Updates in Accessibility at Google

Google has shared recent updates to its products and features related to accessibility.

Interested individuals can sign up for the accessibility newsletter at g.

Another episode with updates is expected in a few months.