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Google Voice Offers Access To Hands-Free Navigation Via Voice Commands, While Searching To Work Better In Bad Network Zones

By Jinger Jarrett
Published on: 07:26 PST, Apr 13, 2016

Google is adding new features to its Google Voice, as well as to its Google smartphone apps made for voice. Although the new features are currently in beta, testing will be over soon and the new features will allow greater accessibility and productivity for users.

International Business Times reported that Google discreetly launched the new feature for its smartphone apps, and allows users hands-free navigation control over their smartphones. The new features are primarily aimed at providing people with disabilities more enhanced accessibility and functionality. The new features will allow users to toggle between screens and open up apps completely through voice commands.

As previously reported in Inquisitr, Google has been updating all of its online tools, as well as applications to provide enterprise functionality for businesses and better serve personal users too. For smartphone users, Google added push notifications to Gmail. The new push notifications allow users to receive real time updates from their inbox so they know they have received email. Google released the new function last year when it released its Gmail API.

The API provides additional functionality in addition to the current IMAP support provided by Google. Google also offers a Learning Center to allow users to get the most out of their email with extensive documentation in addition to all the other business tools Google offers.

Google highlighted their Voice features recently on their blog.

“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.”

The Google Voice features include the use of short commands like “Open Chrome” and “Go Home.” The program has been opened up to testers, and it has been so popular that the program is now closed to beta testers. Google isn’t the only site to add additional accessibility features though. Twitter now offers an image description feature for visually impaired users, while Facebook offers an AI driven image recognition feature that automatically offers image descriptions.

Hindustan Times reported that Google Voice Search is being improved so that it works better in bad network zones in India. In a report released by Economic Times, engineers are busy developing an artificial intelligence engine that would take the search function from online to the local device.

Anjali Joshi, vice president, Google Search, said that he wanted to see Google Search on the device because Google Voice would work better, and the applications for the technology go beyond voice applications.

“This is a technology which is not just applicable to voice alone. Many of these machine learning, artificial intelligence driven models are being shrunk to a point where they can be done on the device. Once that happens, we will start seeing huge progress.”

Google Voice will also allow users to use Google Chrome to visit websites, and it will allow them to use voice commands too. Simple commands like “scroll up” and “click next” will allow users to navigate around the sites. One of the new features being added is putting numbers next to icons so that users can voice a number instead of having to call out the name. The numbers will eliminate any problems users may have had in the past with mispronunciations or accent problems, which is particularly important for users with speech impediments.

[Photo via Google]

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