Google will launch its new Assistant-powered "Action Blocks" to help users with cognitive disabilities. The company recently announced a few updates to its suite of Android accessibility features for Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
According to The Verge's latest report, Google said that Action Blocks is the biggest public release to date. Google users can now customize buttons on their Android devices to perform relatively complex actions such as making calls or playing music.
This innovation will be a big help to those people with cognitive disabilities since navigating complex tasks in Android can sometimes be difficult for them. For better navigation to Voice Access, Sound Amplify will also be supported by Google's new features added to Bluetooth Live Transcribe.
Google's Assistant-powered "Action Blocks" allows Android to customize buttons for complex actions to help people with a cognitive disability
Turning off the lights inside the house, or other common tasks that require voice control can now be automated using Google Assistant macros of Action Blocks.
This feature can be set up by selecting from a list of predefined actions that works via Google Assistant. Users can type in anything that they would usually ask using the voice control feature. Once successful, the user can save the feature as a home screen button. A personal image can be added on the button so that adder users can identify which one is theirs.
Allowing individuals to set up a big photo of a family member or a friend to make a video call is an essential feature. The report clarified that innovation is specifically to help people with cognitive disabilities, and not to make workflows for productivity junkies.
Meanwhile, Google's Live Transcribe remains to be one of the most useful and helpful features on Android devices. It automatically transcribes verbal speech into text, allowing the user to perform the action in more than one language.
A new feature has been added on Live Transcribe that allows its users to set up words that are difficult for Google's transcription engine to recognize, such as names or technical terms that are hard to transcribe because of their pronunciation. Individuals no longer need to train their Live Transcribe by speaking out loud because they can just simply type the words which are hard to recognize.
The last update of Live Transcribe will allow its users to set up their names as a keyword that will make the phone vibrate once it is heard. This innovation can be useful for people who are deaf or cannot hear properly since it will allow the people around them to get their attention.
