Google Chrome helps the blind and visually impaired online
- June 23, 2023
- 0
It should soon be easier for blind and visually impaired people to work with PDFs. According to an internal analysis by Google, there are 360 million PDFs online
It should soon be easier for blind and visually impaired people to work with PDFs. According to an internal analysis by Google, there are 360 million PDFs online
It should soon be easier for blind and visually impaired people to work with PDFs.
According to an internal analysis by Google, there are 360 million PDFs online that are inaccessible to the blind and visually impaired, even with a screen reader. The company wants to change that with Chrome.
With the help of artificial intelligence, there will be a built-in feature in the browser to fix this problem.
It started a few months ago with the launch of Reading Mode, a tool for students. The system enlarges text, changes fonts and removes possible distractions. This was until recently only available in Chrome on ChromeOS devices, but is now available on Chrome on all computers.
Google also relies on Get Image Descriptions, a tool that provides descriptions of uncaptioned online images. The big, friendly tech giant is now also introducing the ability to convert images to text with PDFs. A screen reader can convert this image to text in a PDF without alt text. Then this screen reader can read that out loud. This technique is called OCR, which stands for Optical Character Recognition. In ChromeOS, this is still reserved for Chrome for the time being.
Both features are expected to roll out in the coming months.
After adding biometrics to the password manager and replacing the lock icon, this is another eye-catching announcement for Google Chrome.
Source: IT Daily
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