accessibility
Auto Added by WPeMatico
Apple releases iOS 14.2 with new emojis and an accessibility feature that locates people with lidar
Apple has released iOS 14.2 today. It includes multiple new features as well as some important bug fixes and security updates. Among other things, this release introduces over 100 new emojis.
You’ll find a transgender flag, a smiling face with tear, pinched fingers, two people hugging, some insects and animals, a disguised face and more. When it comes to new variations, there will be a Mx Claus, a gender-inclusive alternative to Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus. Tuxedos are no longer limited to men and veils are no longer limited to women — you’ll be able to send an emoji with a woman wearing a tuxedo and a man wearing a veil.
Today’s release also includes a new accessibility feature for blind users who have an iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max. Thanks to the built-in lidar sensor, you can use your iPhone to detect the presence of and distance to people in the view of the iPhone’s camera.
While it is still useful beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, you can use it to receive an alert when there’s someone in front of you that is more than six feet away, and another one if they come closer to you. In addition to stereo audio alerts, you can set up a haptic pulse that goes faster as the person gets closer.
TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey has more details on the new feature:
iOS 14.2 also adds some minor features, such as new wallpapers, headphone audio level notifications when the volume is too high and redesigned controls for AirPlay.
When Apple introduced the HomePod Mini, the company talked about a new Intercom feature that lets you interact with another Apple user in your house. Today’s software updates add Intercom support for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods and CarPlay.
If you have AirPods, you can now enable optimized battery charging. It works like optimized battery charging on your iPhone. If you plug your AirPods in before going to bed, they won’t charge at full speed. Instead, your iPhone can tell your AirPods to charge to 100% right before you wake up — it should improve your battery life.
Apple is also releasing iPadOS 14.2 and watchOS 7.1. Apple Watch users in South Korea and Russia can now try out the ECG feature with recent Apple Watch models.
Before updating, back up your device. Make sure your iCloud backup is up to date by opening the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and tapping on your account information at the top. Alternatively, you can plug your iOS device into your computer to do a manual backup in iTunes or the Finder. Once this is done, you should go to the Settings app, then “General” and then “Software Update.”
Here’s the full iOS 14.2 changelog:
iOS 14.2 includes the following improvements for your iPhone:
- Over 100 new emoji, including animals, food, faces, household objects, musical instruments, gender-inclusive emoji, and more
- Eight new wallpapers in both light and dark mode versions
- Magnifier can detect people nearby, and report their distance using the LiDAR sensor included in iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max
- Support for iPhone 12 Leather Sleeve with MagSafe
- Optimized battery charging for AirPods to slow the rate of battery aging by reducing the time your AirPods spends fully charged
- Headphone audio level notifications to alert you when audio level could impact your hearing
- New AirPlay controls to stream entertainment throughout your home
- Intercom support with HomePod and HomePod mini using iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, and CarPlay
- Ability to connect HomePod to Apple TV 4K for stereo, surround sound, and Dolby Atmos audio
- Option to provide statistics about Exposure Notifications, without identifying you, to participating Public Health Authorities
This release also fixes the following issues:
- Apps could be out of order on the Home Screen dock
- Camera viewfinder may appear black when launched
- The keyboard on the Lock Screen could miss touches when trying to enter the passcode
- Reminders could default to times in the past
- Photos widget may not display content
- Weather widget could display the high temperature in Celsius when set to Fahrenheit
- Next-hour precipitation chart description in Weather could incorrectly indicate when precipitation stops
- Voice Memos recordings are interrupted by incoming calls
- The screen could be black during Netflix video playback
- Apple Cash could fail to send or receive money when asked via Siri
- Apple Watch app may unexpectedly close when opened
- Workout GPS routes or Health data are prevented from syncing between Apple Watch and iPhone for some users
- Audio is incorrectly labeled as “Not Playing” in the CarPlay Dashboard
- Devices could be prevented from charging wirelessly
- Exposure Notifications is disabled when restoring iPhone from iCloud Backup or transferring data to a new iPhone using iPhone Migration
For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222
Powered by WPeMatico
iPhones can now tell blind users where and how far away people are
Apple has packed an interesting new accessibility feature into the latest beta of iOS: a system that detects the presence of and distance to people in the view of the iPhone’s camera, so blind users can social distance effectively, among many other things.
The feature emerged from Apple’s ARKit, for which the company developed “people occlusion,” which detects people’s shapes and lets virtual items pass in front of and behind them. The accessibility team realized that this, combined with the accurate distance measurements provided by the lidar units on the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, could be an extremely useful tool for anyone with a visual impairment.
Of course during the pandemic one immediately thinks of the idea of keeping six feet away from other people. But knowing where others are and how far away is a basic visual task that we use all the time to plan where we walk, which line we get in at the store, whether to cross the street and so on.
The new feature, which will be part of the Magnifier app, uses the lidar and wide-angle camera of the Pro and Pro Max, giving feedback to the user in a variety of ways.
The lidar in the iPhone 12 Pro shows up in this infrared video. Each dot reports back the precise distance of what it reflects off of.
First, it tells the user whether there are people in view at all. If someone is there, it will then say how far away the closest person is in feet or meters, updating regularly as they approach or move further away. The sound corresponds in stereo to the direction the person is in the camera’s view.
Second, it allows the user to set tones corresponding to certain distances. For example, if they set the distance at six feet, they’ll hear one tone if a person is more than six feet away, another if they’re inside that range. After all, not everyone wants a constant feed of exact distances if all they care about is staying two paces away.
The third feature, perhaps extra useful for folks who have both visual and hearing impairments, is a haptic pulse that goes faster as a person gets closer.
Last is a visual feature for people who need a little help discerning the world around them, an arrow that points to the detected person on the screen. Blindness is a spectrum, after all, and any number of vision problems could make a person want a bit of help in that regard.
The system requires a decent image on the wide-angle camera, so it won’t work in pitch darkness. And while the restriction of the feature to the high end of the iPhone line reduces the reach somewhat, the constantly increasing utility of such a device as a sort of vision prosthetic likely makes the investment in the hardware more palatable to people who need it.
This is far from the first tool like this — many phones and dedicated devices have features for finding objects and people, but it’s not often that it comes baked in as a standard feature.
People detection should be available to iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max running the iOS 14.2 release candidate that was just made available today. Details will presumably appear soon on Apple’s dedicated iPhone accessibility site.
Powered by WPeMatico
Google Assistant comes to gaze-powered accessible devices
People who rely on gaze-tracking to interact with their devices on an everyday basis now have a powerful new tool in their arsenal: Google Assistant. Substituting gaze for its original voice-based interface, the Assistant’s multiple integrations and communication tools should improve the capabilities of the Tobii Dynavox devices it now works on.
Assistant will now be possible to add as a tile on Tobii’s eye-tracking tablets and mobile apps, which present a large customizable grid of commonly used items that the user can look at to activate. It acts as an intermediary with a large collection of other software and hardware interfaces that Google supports.
For instance, smart home appliances — which can be incredibly useful for people with certain disabilities — may not have an easily accessible interface for the gaze-tracking device, necessitating other means or perhaps limiting what actions a user can take. Google Assistant works with tons of that stuff out of the box.
“Being able to control the things around you and ‘the world’ is central to many of our users,” said Tobii Dynavox’s CEO, Fredrik Ruben. “The Google assistant ecosystem provides almost endless possibilities — and provides a lot of normalcy to our community of users.”
Users will be able to set up Assistant tiles for commands or apps, and automate inquiries like “what’s on my calendar today?” The setup process just requires a Google account, and then the gaze-tracking device (in this case Tobii Dynavox’s mystifyingly named Snap Core First app) has to be added to the Google Home app as a smart speaker/display. Then Assistant tiles can be added to the interface and customized with whatever commands would ordinarily be spoken.
Image Credits: Google / Tobii Dynavox
Ruben said the integration of Google’s software was “technically straightforward.” “Because our software itself is already built to support a wide variety of access needs and is set up to accommodate launching third-party services, there was a natural fit between our software and Google Assistant’s services,” he explained.
Tobii’s built-in library of icons (things like lights with an up arrow, a door being opened or closed and other visual representations of actions) can also be applied easily to the Assistant shortcuts.
For Google’s part, this is just the latest in a series of interesting accessibility services the company has developed, including live transcription, detection when sign language is being used in group video calls and speech recognition that accommodates non-standard voices and people with impediments. Much of the web is not remotely accessible but at least the major tech companies put in some good work now and then to help.
Powered by WPeMatico
Accessibility’s nextgen breakthroughs will be literally in your head
Jim Fruchterman is the founder of Tech Matters and Benetech, nonprofit developers of technology for social good.
More posts by this contributor
Predicting the future of technology for people with visual impairments is easier than you might think. In 2003, I wrote an article entitled “In the Palm of Your Hand” for the Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness from the American Foundation for the Blind. The arrival of the iPhone was still four years away, but I was able to confidently predict the center of assistive technology shifting from the desktop PC to the smart phone.
“A cell phone costing less than $100,” I wrote, “will be able to see for the person who can’t see, read for the person who can’t read, speak for the person who can’t speak, remember for the person who can’t remember, and guide the person who is lost.” Looking at the tech trends at the time, that transition was as inevitable as it might have seemed far-fetched.
We are at a similar point now, which is why I am excited to play a part of Sight Tech Global, a virtual event Dec. 2-3 that is convening the top technologists to discuss how AI and related technologies will usher in a new era of remarkable advances for accessibility and assistive tech, in particular for people who are blind or visually impaired.
To get to the future, let me turn to the past. I was walking around the German city of Speyer in the 1990s with pioneering blind assistive tech entrepreneur Joachim Frank. Joachim took me on a flight of fancy about what he really wanted from assistive technology, as opposed to what was then possible. He quickly highlighted three stories of how advanced tech could help him as he was walking down the street with me.
- As I walk down the street, and walk by a supermarket, I do not want it to read all of the signs in the window. However, if one of the signs notes that kasseler kipchen (smoked porkchops, his favorite) are on sale, and the price is particularly good, I would like that whispered in my ear.
- And then, as a young woman approaches me walking in the opposite direction, I’d like to know if she’s wearing a wedding ring.
- Finally, I would like to know that someone has been following me for the last two blocks, that he is a known mugger, and that if I quicken my walking speed, go fifty meters ahead, turn right, and go another seventy meters, I will arrive at a police substation!
Joachim blew my mind. In one short walk, he outlined a far bolder vision of what tech could do for him, without bogging down in the details. He wanted help with saving money, meeting new friends and keeping himself safe. He wanted abilities which not only equaled what people with normal vision had, but exceeded them. Above all, he wanted tools which knew him and his desires and needs.
We are nearing the point where we can build Joachim’s dreams. It won’t matter if the assistant whispers in your ear, or uses a direct neural implant to communicate. We will probably see both. But, the nexus of tech will move inside your head, and become a powerful instrument for equality of access. A new tech stack with perception as a service. Counter-measures to outsmart algorithmic discrimination. Tech personalization. Affordability.
That experience will be built on an ever more application rich and readily available technology stack in the cloud. As all that gets cheaper and cheaper to access, product designers can create and experiment faster than ever. At first, it will be expensive, but not for long as adoption – probably by far more than simply disabled people – drives down price. I started my career in tech for the blind by introducing a reading machine that was a big deal because it halved the price of that technology to $5,000. Today even better OCR is a free app on any smartphone.
We could dive into more details of how we build Joachim’s dreams and meet the needs of millions of others of individuals with vision disabilities. But it will be far more interesting to explore with the world’s top experts at Sight Tech Global on Dec. 2-3 how those tech tools will become enabled In Your Head!
Registration is free and open to all.
Powered by WPeMatico
Adobe beefs up developer tools to make it easer to build apps on Experience Cloud
Adobe has had a developer program for years called Adobe.io, but today at the Adobe Developers Live virtual conference, the company announced some new tools with a fresh emphasis on helping developers build custom apps on the Adobe Experience Cloud.
Jason Woosley, VP of developer experience and commerce at Adobe, says that the pandemic has forced companies to build enhanced digital experiences much more quickly than they might have, and the new tools being announced today are at least partly related to helping speed up the development of better online experiences.
“Our focus is very specifically on making the experience-generation business something that’s very attractive to developers and very accessible to developers so we’re announcing a number of tools,” Woosley told TechCrunch.
The idea is to build a more complete framework over time to make it easier to build applications and connect to data sources that take advantage of the Experience Cloud tooling. For starters, Project Firefly is designed to help developers build applications more quickly by providing a higher level of automation than was previously available.
“Project Firefly creates an extensibility framework that reduces the boilerplate that a developer would need to get started working with the Experience Cloud, and extends that into the customizations that we know every implementation eventually needs to differentiate the storefront experience, the website experience or whatever customer touch point as these things become increasingly digital,” he said.
In order to make those new experiences open to all, the company is also announcing React Spectrum, an open source set of libraries and tools designed to help members of the Adobe developer community build more accessible applications and websites.
“It comes with all of the accessibility features that often get forgotten when you’re in a race to market, so it’s nice to make sure that you will be very inclusive with your design, making sure that you’re bringing on all aspects of your audiences,” Woosley said.
Finally, a big part of interacting with Experience Cloud is taking advantage of all of the data that’s available to help build those more customized interactions with customers that having that data enables. To that end, the company is announcing some new web and mobile software development kits (SDKs) designed to help make it simpler to link to Experience Cloud data sources as you build your applications.
Project Firefly is available in developer preview starting today. Several React Spectrum components and some data connection SDKs are also available today. The company intends to keep adding to these various pieces in the coming months.
Powered by WPeMatico
OrCam Technologies co-founder Amnon Shashua to speak at Sight Tech Global
If the measure of progress in technology is that devices should become ever smaller and more capable, then OrCam Technologies is on a roll. The Israeli firm’s OrCam MyEye, which fits on the arm of a pair of glasses, is far more powerful and much smaller than its predecessor. With new AI-based Smart Reading software released in July, the device not only “reads” text and labels but also identifies people by name and describes other important aspects of the visual world. It also interacts with the user, principally people who are blind or visually impaired, by means of an AI-based smart voice assistant.
At the upcoming Sight Tech Global virtual event, we’re pleased to announce that OrCam’s co-founder and co-CEO, Professor Amnon Shashua, will be a featured speaker. The event, which will take place virtually on December 2-3, is focused on how AI-related technologies will influence assistive technology and accessibility in the years ahead. Attendance is free and pre-registration is open now.
Shashua is a towering figure in the technology world. He is not only the co-founder of OrCam but also Mobileye, the company that provides the computer-vision sensors and systems for automotive safety and autonomous navigation. Intel acquired Mobileye for $15.3 billion in 2017, the single-largest acquisition of an Israeli company ever.
Shashua started OrCam at the prompting of his aunt, who was losing her sight and hoped that her technologist nephew could apply his prodigious talents as a scientist and AI expert to help. With that goal in mind, he started OrCam in 2010 with co-founder Ziv Aviram. The firm has gone on to raise $130.4 million dollars from investors, including Intel, and sell the OrCam MyEye device to tens of thousands of users in over 50 countries. At $3900 per device in the U.S., the OrCam MyEye is far from affordable for most people, but the firm says the device price will come down as production increases.
At the start of a new era for assistive technology, OrCam’s approach with the lightweight, offline-operating OrCam MyEye is nothing if not thought provoking (the device was recognized as a TIME Best Invention of 2019). Will miniaturization of sophisticated sensors and electronics lead to unobtrusive sensor arrays as the foundation of assistive tech? Will the AI-based natural-language processing lead to an all-purpose, customizable personal assistants that work with abilities as needed?
“In OrCam’s roadmap,” says Shashua, “the ultimate AT must have the right balance between computer vision and natural language processing. For example, the “smart reading” feature recently launched harnesses NLP (natural language processing) in order to guide the device to which text information to extract and communicate to the user. NLP allows the user to specify precisely what he/she needs to know. For example, the “orientation” feature recently launched allows the user to prompt the device to describe the objects in the scene and to provide audible guidance to those objects. We see the “orientation” feature growing with respect to vocabulary, with respect to search (e.g., “notify me when you see a Toilet sign”), and with respect to obstacle avoidance (where is the free-space in the scene). The technological challenge in bringing these desires into reality critically depends on the progress of compute and algorithms.
“By ‘compute,’” says Shashua, “I mean the ever-growing trend to miniaturize processing power enables more sophisticated algorithms to reside on smaller and battery-powered footprint. By “algorithms” I mean the ever-increasing sophistication of deep-tech to mimic human intelligence. Combining the two creates a powerful impact on the future of assistive tech for people who are blind and visually impaired.”
Shashua received a B.Sc in mathematics and computer science from Tel-Aviv University in 1985 and his M.Sc in computer science in 1989 from the Weizmann Institute of Science. He received a Ph.D in brain and cognitive sciences in 1993 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), while working at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Sight Tech Global is a virtual event on December 2-3 and attendance is free. Pre-registration is open now.
Sight Tech Global welcomes sponsors. Current sponsors include Verizon Media, Google, Waymo, Mojo Vision and Wells Fargo, The event is organized by volunteers and all proceeds from the event benefit The Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Silicon Valley.
Powered by WPeMatico
Google’s Lookout app for vision-impaired now scans food labels and long documents
Google has updated its Lookout app, an AI toolkit for people with impaired vision, with two helpful new capabilities: scanning long documents and reading out food labels. Paper forms and similarly shaped products at the store present a challenge for blind folks and this ought to make things easier.
Food labels, if you think about it, are actually a pretty difficult problem for a computer vision system to solve. They’re designed to be attention-grabbing and distinctive, but not necessarily highly readable or informative. If a sighted person can accidentally buy the wrong kind of peanut butter, what chance does someone who can’t read the label themselves have?
Image Credits: Google
The new food label mode, then, is less about reading text and more about recognizing exactly what product it’s looking at. If the user needs to turn the can or bottle to give the camera a good look, the app will tell them so. It compares what it sees to a database of product images, and when it gets a match it reads off the relevant information: brand, product, flavor, other relevant information. If there’s a problem, the app can always scan the barcode as well.
Document scanning isn’t exactly exciting, but it’s good to have the option built in a straightforward way into a general-purpose artificial vision app. It works as you’d expect: Point your phone at the document (the app will help you get the whole thing in view) and it scans it for your screen reader to read out.
The “quick read” mode that the app debuted with last year, which watches for text in the camera view and reads it out loud, has gotten some speed improvements.
The update brings a few other conveniences to the app, which should run on any Android phone with 2 gigs of RAM and running version 6.0 or higher. It’s also now available in Spanish, German, French and Italian.
Powered by WPeMatico
Google highlights accessible locations with new Maps feature
Google has announced a new, welcome and no doubt long-asked-for feature to its Maps app: wheelchair accessibility info. Businesses and points of interest featuring accessible entrances, bathrooms and other features will now be prominently marked as such.
Millions, of course, require such accommodations as ramps or automatic doors, from people with limited mobility to people with strollers or other conveyances. Google has been collecting information on locations’ accessibility for a couple years, and this new setting puts it front and center.
The company showed off the feature in a blog post for Global Accessibility Awareness Day. To turn it on, users can go to the “Settings” section of the Maps app, then “Accessibility settings,” then toggle on “Accessible places.”
This will cause any locations searched for or tapped on to display a small wheelchair icon if they have accessible facilities. Drilling down into the details where you find the address and hours will show exactly what’s available. Unfortunately it doesn’t indicate the location of those resources (helpful if someone is trying to figure out where to get dropped off, for instance), but knowing there’s an accessible entrance or restroom at all is a start.
The information isn’t automatically created or sourced from blueprints or anything — like so much on Google, it comes from you, the user. Any registered user can note the presence of accessible facilities the way they’d note things like in-store pickup or quick service. Just go to “About” in a location’s description and hit the “Describe this place” button at the bottom.
Powered by WPeMatico
Logitech accessory kit makes the Xbox Adaptive Controller even more accessible
Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller was a breath of fresh air in a gaming world that has largely failed to consider the needs of people with disabilities. Now Logitech has joined the effort to empower this diverse population with an expanded set of XAC-compatible buttons and triggers.
Logitech’s $100 Adaptive Gaming Kit comes with a dozen buttons in a variety of sizes, two large analog levers to control the triggers, and a Velcro-style pad to which they can all be securely attached. It’s hopefully the start of a hardware ecosystem that will be at least a significant fraction of the diversity available to the able population.
The visibility of gamers with disabilities has grown both as the communities have organized and communicated their needs, and as gaming itself has moved towards the mainstream. Turns out there are millions of people who, for one reason or another, can’t use a controller or mouse and keyboard the way others can — and they want to play games too.
Always one of the more reliably considerate companies when it comes to accessibility issues, Microsoft began developing the XAC a couple years back — though admittedly after years of, like the rest of the gaming hardware community, failing to accommodate disabled gamers.
Logitech was an unwitting partner, having provided joysticks for the project without being told what they were for. But when the XAC was unveiled, Logitech was stunned and chagrined.
“This is something that, shame on us, we didn’t think about,” said Mark Starrett, Logitech G’s senior global product manager. “We’ve been trying to diversify gaming, like getting more girls to play, but we totally did not think about this. But you see the videos Microsoft put out, how excited the kids are — it’s so motivating to see that, it makes you want to continue that work.”
And to their credit, the team got in contact with Microsoft soon after and said they’d like to collaborate on some accessories for the system.
In some ways this wouldn’t be particularly difficult: The XAC uses 3.5mm headphone jacks as its main input, so it can accept signals from a wide range of devices, from its own buttons and sticks to things like blow tubes, so there’s no worries about proprietary connections, for instance. But when it comes to accessible devices and systems like this, there are often other rigorous standards in place that need to be upheld throughout, so it’s necessary to work closely with both the platform provider (Microsoft) and, naturally, the people who will actually be using them.
“This community, you can’t make anything for them without doing it with them,” said Starrett. “When we design a gaming keyboard or mouse, we engage pros, players, all that stuff, right? So with this, it’s absolutely critical to watch them with every piece.”
“The biggest takeaway is that everybody is so different: every challenge, every setup, everyone we talked to,” he continued. “We had a 70, 80 year old guy who plays Destiny and has arthritis — all we really needed to do was put a block on the back of his controller, because he couldn’t pull the trigger. Then we worked with a girl who has a quadstick, she was playing Madden like a pro with something you just puff and blow on. Another guy played everything with his feet. So we spent a lot of time on the site just watching.”
The final set of buttons they arrived at includes three very large ones, four smaller ones (though still big compared with ordinary controller buttons), four “light touch” buttons that can be easily activated by any contact, and two big triggers. Because they knew different gamers would use the sets differently, there’s a set of labels in the box that can be applied however they like.
Then there are two hook and loop (i.e. Velcro) mats to which the buttons can be attached, one rigid and the other flexible, so it can be draped over a leg, the arm of a couch, etc.
Even the packaging the buttons come in is accessible: A single strip of tape pulls out and causes the whole box to unfold, and then everything is in non-sealed reusable bags. The guide is wordless so it can be used in any country, by any player.
It’s nice to see such consideration at work, and no doubt the players who will benefit from these products will be happy to have a variety of options to choose from. I was starting to think I could use a couple of these buttons myself.
Starrett seemed very happy with the results, and also proud that the work had started something new at Logitech.
“The groups we talked to brought a lot of different things to mind for us,” he said. “We’re always updating things, but now we’re updating everything with an eye to accessibility. It’s helped Logitech as a company to learn about this stuff.”
You can pick up Logitech’s Adaptive Gaming kit here for $100.
Powered by WPeMatico
Live Caption, Google’s automatic captioning technology, is now available on Pixel 4
Live Caption, Google’s automatic captioning system first introduced at its I/O developer conference this May, is now officially available, alongside the launch of the new Pixel 4. But unlike some of the other technologies highlighted at the company’s Pixel hardware event yesterday, Live Caption won’t be limited to Google’s new smartphone alone. After the initial debut on Pixel 4, the automatic captioning technology will roll out to Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL, Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL before year-end, says Google, and will become more broadly available in 2020.
The company has offered automatic captions on YouTube for a decade, but that same sort of experience isn’t available across the wider web and mobile devices. For example, Google explains, you can’t read captions for things like the audio messages sent by your friends, on trending videos published elsewhere on social media and on the content you record yourself.
There’s a significant accessibility issue with the lack of captions in all these places, but there’s a convenience issue, as well.
If you’re in a loud environment, like a commuter train, or trying to watch content privately and forgot your headphones, you may need to just use the captions. Or maybe you don’t want to blare the audio, which disturbs others around you. Or perhaps, you want to see the words appear because you’re having trouble understanding the audio, or just want to be sure to catch every word.
With the launch of the Pixel 4, Live Caption is also available for the first time to the general public.
The technology will capture and automatically caption videos and spoken audio on your device, except for phone and video calls. This captioning all happens in real time and on your device — not in the cloud. That means it works even if your device lacks a cell signal or access to Wi-Fi. The captions also stay private and don’t leave your phone.
This is similar to how the Pixel 4’s new Recorder app functions. It, too, will do its speech-to-text processing all on your device, in order to give you real-time transcriptions of your meetings, interviews, lectures or anything else you want to record, without compromising your privacy.
You can launch the Live Captions feature with a tap from the volume slider that appears, then reposition the caption box anywhere on your screen so it doesn’t get in the way of what you’re viewing.
Currently, the feature supports English only. But Google says it’s working to add more languages in the future.
After today’s launch on Pixel 4 and the rollout to the rest of the modern Pixel line of smartphones this year, it will start to show up in other new Android phones. Google says it’s working with other manufacturers to make the technology available to more people as soon as next year.
Powered by WPeMatico