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What you need to know
- Google has announced a number of new accessibility features for Chrome, Maps, Live Caption and more.
- Chrome now checks for typos in the URLs you type and offers suggestions.
- Google Maps is also making the wheelchair icon available to everyone, and Live Caption is expanding language support.
Google Chrome now detects typos in the URLs you type and suggests websites that match what you were probably trying to type.
The latest improvement is part of a larger accessibility update being rolled out by Google and aims to make it easier for people with dyslexia or those learning new languages to access the websites they want to visit. The update will be available on desktop first, with a mobile release in the coming months.
Chrome’s new typo detector is useful for people who often misspell website URLs. While it generally seems safe, making this mistake could lead you to another website, which is known as typosquatting and is a form of cybercrime. Typosquatters register domain names similar to the names of popular websites to trick people into visiting their websites instead.
This type of cyber attack can expose you to malware. Typosquatters often use their websites to distribute malicious files that can be used to steal your personal information via phishing attacks.
In addition to Chrome’s new capability, the wheelchair icon is now visible to everyone on Google Maps. Available since 2020, the feature provides a way to identify places that are accessible to people with disabilities. It is especially useful for people who use wheelchairs, walkers or other mobility aids. Previously, however, you had to sign up for the service’s “Accessible Places” feature to check if a place has a wheelchair-accessible entrance.
Google is also making the Live Caption for calls feature available to more people. Early last year, the Google Pixel 6 series got this capability, allowing you to type your answer during a phone call if you’d rather not speak, and have it read aloud to the person on the other end of the line. This particular capability is currently available on many of the top Android phones running Android 12 or later.
Starting this summer, Google is expanding the feature to the Pixel 4 and 5 lineups, as well as additional Android models from Samsung and other OEMs, with support for more languages, including French, Italian, and German. Google is also adding a new caption box for Android tablets.
Finally, Google helps people who are visually impaired or blind gain context about the images they come across online. This is being made possible with a new AI-powered feature in the Lookout app known as “image question and answer” that will initially be available to a select group of visually impaired users.
Lookout is an app launched in 2018 to help blind and visually impaired people understand their surroundings. Powered by an advanced image language model from Google DeepMind, the app can generate descriptions of images whether they have captions or alt text. Users can ask questions about these images with their voice.
These are just the latest accessibility improvements Google has introduced to its ecosystem. At MWC 2023, the search giant unveiled new audio and visual accessibility features for Wear OS, including a mono audio setting to help users who hear better one year than another. Chrome has also received visual accessibility updates that allow you to increase the browser’s content by up to 300%.
