Google brings out the Project Activate app and the new Camera Switches feature to make Android more accessible to everyone.
Google has announced two new tools to make Android more accessible to everyone. The first is called Camera Switches, a new Switch Access feature that uses the phone's front camera to interact with an Android device through facial gestures. The second is Project Activate, an application that allows people to use facial expressions to quickly activate personalized actions with a single gesture, such as saying a preset phrase, sending a text, making a phone call or playing audio. Designed using feedback from users using alternative communication technologies, Camera Switches and Project Activate then use machine learning methods to detect facial and eye gestures. At the same time, the company announces that it has expanded its existing accessibility tool, Lookout, so that blind or visually impaired people can do more activities quickly and easily. Let's see in detail how both tools work.
Camera Switches, what it is and how it works
In 2015, the Mountain View company launched Switch Access for Android, which allows people with limited skills to more easily navigate their devices using adaptive buttons called switches. Camera Switches is therefore a device that replaces a physical keyboard, a mouse or the touch of the phone screen, sending "command" signals to a user's Android device using only eye movements and facial gestures, associated with a range of actions. You can choose from six gestures - look right, look left, look up, smile, raise your eyebrows or open your mouth - to scan and select the command on your phone. However, there are several methods to choose from: you can even assign gestures to open notifications, return to the home screen or pause tracking. Camera switches can be used in conjunction with physical switches. Camera Switches has been in testing since August, but will begin rolling out within the Android Accessibility Suite this week and will be fully available by the end of the month.
Project Activate, what it is and how it works
"To understand how facial gestures could allow communication and personal expression, we worked with numerous people with motor and language disabilities, and with their caregivers" (ie a relative who takes care of a family member with continuous assistance). As stated by Google, which for the Project Activate app has obtained the collaboration of Darren Gabbert, an expert in the use of assistive technology, who communicates using a speech generation device (SGD). The man has always used physical switches to type letters which his computer then replicates aloud, but it is a system that is described as slow, to the point of making it difficult to fully participate in conversations. With Project Activate, on the other hand, regardless of the type of facial mobility, the response process takes place more quickly, using, among other things, only the telephone. Darren can answer yes or no to questions, ask for a minute to type something into his speech generation device, or send a message to his wife. The app is currently only available in the US, UK, Canada and Australia in English, and can be downloaded from the Google Play Store.
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