What's new in Android Accessibility | Session

Key Takeaways

[Music] hi my name is brian kemler and i'm a product manager on android accessibility today my colleague charlene and i will be talking about the work our teams have done over the last year to make android more accessible when we think about disability we think expansively disability affects not only individuals but also their friends family colleagues and indeed anyone they interact with i'm going to be talking about how we've been working to develop our products with the nearly three-quarter of a billion people who are blind low vision deaf or hard of hearing working with focus groups in these communities today we will share just some of the more than one dozen new features coming soon so let's get to it talkback android screen reader is and has always been a mainstay of accessibility on android inside google we test google products to make sure that they're compatible with talkback externally we encourage all application developers to do the same if your app doesn't work with talkback that means a blind or low vision person can't use android without assistance being able to use the device independently is of the utmost importance to both our users and everyone they interact with so please test your apps for accessibility talkback is a screen reader but it does a lot more than read the screen aloud it takes user input to enable display free operation so blind and low vision people can perform literally any task a sighted person could all without having to look at the screen over the years we've heard talkback users want improvements such as easier gestures simpler menus and new ways to customize the screen reader to work according to each individual's unique needs and this year we address those feature requests in talkback's most significant release to date talkback's angle gestures let users operate their phones with a single hand like when they're using a cane but some users asked for a more intuitive system so we went back to the drawing board and added a dozen multi-finger gestures to make gestures easier to learn memorize and use for instance we added a much requested gesture to control media playback now this may sound simple but for a blind user who has to navigate through multiple menus ui elements and announcements just to start or stop a podcast it's now dramatically simpler a double tap with two fingers is all i need to control playback reading and listening is also easier with new reading controls and a unified talkback menu reading controls let you change how you navigate on the fly with a three finger swipe right or left and then a single finger swipe to slice through headlines sentences or to listen word by word we've also combined the previous global and local context menus into a single unifi talkback menu so now everything people need to perform common actions is in one place another thing we've learned from working with the community is that everyone interacts with their devices in a different way so starting with talkback 9.1 most gestures and menus are customizable instead of just talking talkback now understands voice commands to help people access difficult to find actions these are just a few of the nearly dozen new features including a new tabletop mode and two new languages for talkback's built-in braille keyboard the all-new talkback is not only a collaboration with the community but also with samsung who is now actively contributing code in our new partnership the fruit of our joint effort is that talkback is now the default screen reader on samsung galaxy this means learning how to use a screen reader on android will be simpler and easier together google and samsung will be able to deliver improvements faster and more frequently than ever before now let's focus on low vision there are nearly a quarter of a billion people who have some form of low vision among the most prevalent kind is light sensitivity have you ever looked at a glaring smartphone in the middle of the night only to have to hold or tilt it away from your eyes because it was too bright this is how people with light sensitivity experience light in everyday conditions light sensitivity can be a symptom of migraines dry eye or just looking at your phone in really dark conditions starting an android s we're including a new extra dim setting in accessibility that reduces screen brightness to near total darkness we hope this feature makes reading in low light a little more comfortable for everyone for users who need a little help seeing the finer print we've added a new window magnifier window magnifier differs from the current's full screen magnification in that its spot magnifies only a portion of the screen helping you maintain context we've included the ability to use both at the same time and to switch between full and window magnification with low vision users needs in mind we've also now included the ability to bold text to improve readability and with that i'm going to hand off to my colleague charlene to talk about accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing people thanks brian hi everyone my name is charlene young i work in android accessibility and i'm the product manager for live transcribe and sound amplifier today i'd like to share with you how we're making audio more accessible for deaf and hard of hearing people at the very last slide i will also touch base on how you can access these different experiences did you know that the population of deaf and hard of hearing people 466 million people would make it the third largest country just behind china and india if you think about it it wouldn't be a huge surprise almost everyone knows a person who has hearing challenges it could be your parents grandparents or friends and most likely we will also develop certain type of hearing issues as we age broadly speaking there are two ways we can access our audios one with captioning and another with amplification i will be going into each of these in depth and how they benefit the user experience both on device and in the real world and this is really important we strive to make our products more accessible but also where we can we like to leverage machine learning and ai to make the world around us a little more accessible so let's dive right in first i'm going to talk about captioning and then i will talk about amplification two years ago sundar announced an android first the ability to caption speech in media with live caption live caption makes speech accessible to the 466 million people who are deaf or hard of hearing not to mention those of us who prefer to read instead of listen since then live caption has added the ability to caption calls and identify songs playing in videos now let's move on to live caption sibling live transcribe and sound notifications it's an app that makes everyday conversations and surrounding sounds more accessible among people who are deaf and hard of hearing using just your android phone i will go over how we make conversation and sound accessible in the following slides to make the app more accessible to users globally live transcribe now supports over 80 languages and dialects and is serving millions of people we're also working on supporting offline mode in live transcribe this year there are also features such as typing back response and custom dictionary to help users communicate easier with others now for developers who are looking to include transcription and dictionary customization you're welcome to check out cloud speech api so we've talked about captioning conversation what about captioning sound imagine that you're deaf and you're at a hotel suddenly a fire alarm goes off how would you know this if we couldn't hear the alarm with cell notifications you can be alerted with push notifications flashing light or vibration on your phone when there are critical sounds around you so that you can take action quickly but what if your doorbell sounds like birth chirping sound that will work too we're working on a customization feature which allows you to train your own unique sound in this case your virtual print doorbell so that you can be alerted when someone rings your doorbell let's now take a closer look at what you can do with cell notifications depending on whether or not your phone is on you you can set up the alert with push notifications a flash from your camera light or vibrations on your android phone if you like to have your android phone constantly monitoring surrounding sound at your home pairing with a connected wearable should give you the best experience with timeline view you're able to see what happened last night when you were sleeping we build cell notifications based on our sound understanding machine learning technology it runs purely on device if you like to know more about the technology powering this my teammate sagar is going to talk about it in the machine learning applications for accessibility session now imagine you're losing your hearing which probably all of us will encounter as we age what's the first thing you wish you can do most likely you want to have something that can help you hear audio more clear right this is what cell amplifier is built for we ship cell amplifier to help hard of hearing people listen to real life conversations by bringing down the background noise and boosting the frequency levels your hearing is weaker at in our recent release we've also added one of the top requested features which is to support bluetooth headphones other than improving clarity of audio in the real world we've also added the same capability for the music and video being played on your phone now how do you open them on the phone imagine that you're a person with vision hearing or cognitive conditions being able to use your phones and access to the real world is super important this is why we think it's essential for users to access the accessibility products quickly and easily with accessibility button previous versions of android users are able to access accessibility products through accessibility shortcut by either pressing on volume hardware buttons or software button inside the system navigation bar this could be very unfriendly especially for motor impaired and low vision users since the button is tiny and performing gesture could be very difficult i'm happy to announce that in android 12 we have made improvements to accessibility shortcut so that they are easier to trigger with the always on floating button accessing your favorite accessibility products is now just a tap away and you can quickly get it out of the way when you don't need it thank you all for watching i hope you enjoy our session if you have any questions or feedback please reach out and let us know [Music]