Need to use your Android phone but your hands are tied up? A new voice feature from Google can help.
Voice Access, currently in beta status, allows you to move around the
screen, jump to other screens and open apps through your voice. You can
utter specific commands, such as "Open Chrome" or "Go home." Voice
Access also places numbers next to icons and other objects on a screen.
So you can say the number associated with an item to access it.
Smartphones play a vital role in helping people communicate, find
information and manage their lives, all with a few taps. But people with
disabilities can sometimes feel cut off from the technology designed to
help us.
Voice Access is part of Google's effort to make its
phones more accessible to people with disabilities that prevent them
from using their hands or seeing the screen clearly. Apple has its own
iPhone technology called
VoiceOver, which reads whatever you tap on the screen, a helpful option for people who are blind or visually impaired.
"We recently launched Voice Access Beta, an app that allows people who
have difficulty manipulating a touch screen due to paralysis, tremor,
temporary injury or other reasons to control their
Android devices by voice," Google said in a
blog post Monday.
Those who want to try Voice Access Beta are out of luck for now. The program is apparently full. The
Voice Access page says: "At this time, the testing program has enough testers and isn't accepting more users."
Voice Access joins other Google features designed for people with
disabilities. Google Docs users can create and edit documents using
their voice. Google Chromebooks include a screen reader called ChromeVox
that helps people use text-to-speech software to navigate the screen.
The next version of Android will offer a Vision Settings screen through
which you can manage the font size, display size and other attributes.
