US-based technology giant Google has published an article on its official blog page where it talks about new features in its products and services. This article was about Live Caption, Chrome, Maps and Lookout. Google announced these features as part of the “Global Accessibility Awareness Day” (GAAD), which has been celebrated since 2012. As such, the new features are actually aimed directly or indirectly at helping people with disabilities lead a better life.
So what are the new features in Google products and services? Let’s not extend the word and let’s take a closer look at the features.
Google Chrome will detect if you misspelled URLs in the address bar!
If you make a typo when searching for a term in Google Chrome, Google will warn you and show you results for the correct term, saying “you’re seeing results for this query with corrected spelling”. This is now true for URLs as well. Let’s say you typed “wentekno.com” instead of “webtekno.com” in the address bar. In such cases, Google Chrome will display a warning and inform you that the URL may be misspelled.
It is possible to say that this feature is important. So much so that hackers often try to defraud people by producing a fake copy of a website and changing one or a few letters in the domain. Here, Google Chrome’s new feature will help prevent this. Let’s also mention that the new feature, which has started to be distributed to desktop versions as of today, will come to mobile devices in the coming months.
Improved Live Caption feature
A few years ago, Google announced its accessibility feature, which it called Live Caption. This feature enabled hearing impaired individuals to have a quality smartphone experience in the first stage. However, in the later stages, the scope of Live Caption expanded and this feature started to include very effective innovations such as the ability to translate.
Google has done a study that specifically optimizes the Live Caption feature for tablets. The Live Caption feature, which can also be used on the Calls service, allows text answers to be given during a call. Moreover, let’s say you create a text response with Live Caption. This response can also be read aloud to the other party.
Google Maps will show wheelchair accessible places
The Google Maps service, used by almost every smartphone owner, will now display a special icon for wheelchair-friendly places. In this way, an individual with a walking disability will have the opportunity to learn whether he or she will be comfortable at the destination. In addition, all Android and iOS phone users will be able to provide information on whether the venues are suitable for wheelchair use.
With artificial intelligence, it will be told what is in a photo
Google’s service called Lookout, developed for visually impaired individuals, also gains artificial intelligence support. In this context, artificial intelligence will now be able to detect everything in a photograph and transfer it to a visually impaired individual. In fact, until now photos could already be narrated, but the creator had to add “alternative text” to do this. Lookout was also reading this alternative text to the visually impaired individual. However, such an effective move came from Google when the researches revealed that the rate of adding alternative text is very low.
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