Accessibility in Duo

With Duo, you can make high quality video calls across Android and iOS. Duo allows you to record video and voice messages and send them to your friends. Now those messages can be auto captioned in over 120 languages, so you can catch the moment even if you aren’t able to listen. Sign up to become an accessibility trusted tester and provide feedback while trying new products in your own time.

Android solutions for users with motor impairments

We’re excited to announce Switch Access and Voice Access updates from the last year! Switch Access now supports Dark Mode on the latest release of Android —Android 10 — making it easier on the eyes and has received many fixes and stability improvements to enhance reliability. Voice Access will soon launch version 4.0 containing magnification controls and a new grid selection mode. Magnification controls will allow users to operate Android’s built-in magnification service through Voice Access. Grid selection provides a numbered grid to interact with any element on the screen even if it wasn’t labeled. Switch Access is available in more than 70 languages and Voice Access continues to support English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German.

Android features for AAC users and users with dementia

Making our technology more accessible for people with cognitive disabilities is a large area of focus for us. Our research shows that about 80% of people with moderate to severe cognitive disabilities cannot use smart devices or apps independently. Action Blocks makes features and services on Android more accessible for people with age-related disabilities and cognitive disabilities. Using simple, customized buttons on your home screen, you can complete daily tasks with just one tap, like making a video call, turning on your lights, or watching your favorite show. Built for and with people with cognitive disabilities, age-related cognitive decline, dementia, Alzheimer’s, aphasia, autism, and Down Syndrome. Powered by Google Assistant, this application can be used by anyone who wants a very quick way to access Google Assistant actions on their phone home screen. Set it up for your family, friends, or for yourself. Action Blocks is coming soon to the Play Store, so stay tuned!

Chrome & Chrome OS

Chrome & Chrome OS accessibility

Chrome now supports the Orca screen reader on Linux! We're excited to make Chrome accessible on another platform, especially one that's so popular for developers. In January, Microsoft released the new Edge browser, which is built on Chromium technology. Microsoft and Google are now collaborating to make the accessible experience in both browsers better for everyone.

Last year we announced the Get Image Descriptions from Google feature, which can help when you encounter an image without alt text. We're pleased to share that since we launched last year, we've described over 100 million images for users, and we're planning to further improve and expand this feature in the coming months. read more on how we used AI to give people who are blind the "full picture".

On Chrome OS, we've made many enhancements across our accessibility features, but notably our automatic clicks feature now provides dwell controls so that you can right-click, scroll, click-and-drag, and take other actions without ever needing to press a mouse button. Finally, the web platform has continued to improve, and Chrome now supports several new features for developers, including focus-visible, CSS alt, and ARIA annotations.

Crisis Response

Emergency response and safety with Google products

In certain situations, people are unable to verbally communicate during an emergency call. In efforts to help, the Phone app has made improvements to the emergency call. People on emergency calls can share information about the assistance (Medical, Fire, Police) they require to the operator without speaking, using an automated voice service. This is now available in the United States, United Kingdom & Australia on Pixel and select Android devices.

Emergency Location Service (ELS) is a supplemental service that sends enhanced location directly from Android handsets to emergency services when an emergency call or text is placed. Please reach out to: e911@google.com to let us know the type of additional safety data that could be useful to send to the operator during an emergency call.

Geo

Making Maps more accessible

Google Maps Accessibility has been busy! In October 2019 we announced Detailed Voice Guidance for walking navigation, built by and for people with vision impairments. By providing additional audio cues while walking, Detailed Voice Guidance helps to orient and reassure low-vision and blind walkers so navigating to unfamiliar places becomes easier, safer, and more inclusive.

In December 2019, we announced that Google Maps users have contributed wheelchair accessibility information for more than 50 million places worldwide, thanks in large part to contributions from Local Guides. As for getting to those places, this October Google Developer Blog post tells the story of wheelchair accessible transit directions.

G Suite

G Suite: Gmail, Docs, Drive, and other apps

G Suite has made several exciting accessibility improvements over the last year. In Docs, Sheets, and Slides, users can now find accessibility settings under the Tools menu. In Docs, Live edits are summarized in the sidebar, making it easier to follow real-time editing by a team member. This also makes it easier for all team members to collaborate. In addition, the way line breaks are handled and verbalized has been improved, as well as spelling/grammar checkers. In Slides, auto captions were improved to support personalizing the location and size of the captions.

In Hangouts Meet, Live captions were added to meetings. Now when meeting with people in remote locations, Hangouts Meet can caption what people are saying during a meeting. In Gmail, spelling/grammar checkers and Inbox view can now be navigated via a grid layout which allows for reading through a single column like sender, subject, or date. In Gmail, there is dynamic email support which allows you to interact with comments in Docs, Sheets, and Slides, all without having to open the full doc.

Hardware

Google's approach to Hardware

Our goal across the Google Devices and Services team is to make technology that puts people first and expand access to the benefits of technology, which requires broad collaboration across internal teams. On Earth Day 2018, Nest launched the Power Project in partnership with nonprofits and energy companies across the U.S. to bring 1 million energy- and money-saving Nest thermostats to low income (LMI) families. Together we've helped families struggling with high energy costs and raised awareness of the gap in access to affordable home energy with partners like Habitat for Humanity and The United Way — helping over 1,200 communities across the country.

Additionally, Nest thermostats can deliver remarkable energy savings to those who need it most because of learning algorithms that automatically reduce home energy consumption - empowering users to save more than 41 billion kilowatt hours of energy — enough to power all of Denver’s electricity needs for six years.

In commemoration of the 29th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2019, Google Nest partnered with the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation to bring a Google Nest Mini into the homes of up to 100,000 people living with paralysis. Hearing from people living with paralysis presented indisputable evidence that building solutions for people with disabilities also improves life for everyone.

Google Nest & Google Assistant

We are excited about a new feature now available on Android phones that lets you ask Google Assistant to read aloud text content on web pages, such as news articles and blogs. From your browser, you can say “Hey Google, read this page” or “Hey Google, read it.” If the original content isn’t in your native language, Google Assistant can trigger your browser to read aloud in 42 languages.

Another helpful privacy feature allows you to tell Google Assistant to forget something that was unintentionally heard. Just say “Hey Google, that wasn’t for you” and the Assistant will delete the last thing it heard.

Learn more about Google Nest devices the Google Assistant at goo.gle/google-nest-store, assistant.google.com and on YouTube at goo.gle/a11y-assistant.

Material Design & Testing

Material Design

We have added new guidance around making imagery more accessible to our Material Design Accessibility Guidelines. Learn how to use alt text and captions effectively, the differences between decorative and informative images that need alt text, and find helpful HTML code examples that showcase these practices. By following these guidelines, designers and developers can prevent common mistakes that may leave beautifully designed websites and apps difficult to use for people with visual impairments.

Automated accessibility testing for mobile

We’re excited to announce the release of Android Accessibility Scanner v2, which adds new and improved accessibility checks, UI enhancements, as well as “Record Mode”, allowing you to easily scan and review accessibility suggestions from an entire user journey across multiple screens of an app. We’ve also pushed Android Accessibility Test Framework v3.1 to open source, making available improvements and new APIs within the core library that backs our Android accessibility testing tools.

On iOS, we’ve published updates to GTXiLib, our open source iOS accessibility testing framework. The open source iOS Accessibility Scanner, GSCXScanner, also received a major update with the addition of “Continuous Scanning”, making it easy to scan multiple screens within your app.