Google releases accessibility apps for people who are hard of hearing

The promise of technology as a force for good is rarely clearer than in companies’ development of features to help people with disabilities.

Google announced Tuesday that it was releasing two new accessibility features for Android 9 Pie and Pixel phones. 

The first is a live-transcription feature, which turns speech into text on a phone’s screen. The second is a customizable sound amplifier, that lets users choose to increase the volume of some sounds while decreasing others. Both could enable people who are deaf or hard of hearing to use their phones to assist in everyday life.

Live Transcribe displays speech as real time text on the screen. It is available in 70 languages, and also allows users to type back responses if they wish.

Dimitri Kanevsky, a Google research scientist who is deaf, studies and develops speech recognition tools. He worked with the speech team at Google to help turn this idea into an app. Google details the development of the app in a video.

The second new app, Sound Amplifier, dynamically mediates external sound for Android users. Google announced the feature at Google I/O, but it starts rolling out on Android devices today.

The idea with Sound Amplifier is that users may want to increase some sounds, such as the speech of people they are in conversation with, while minimizing other sounds, like background noise. A user would wear headphones connected to their phone. Then they would customize the extent of amplifying vs. minimizing. And the mediated sound would come through the phone’s microphone and into the headphones.

Both features will now come pre-installed on Pixel 3 phones. Android users can find Sound Amplifier in the Play store. And Live Transcribe will be rolled out in a limited beta. Once available, both features can be enabled in the Accessibility menu in settings.

Google and Apple have both been pursuing ways to enable greater accessibility for people with disabilities through technology. Today’s releases are two examples of technological developments that could do just that.