Google rolling out Lookout app to help visually impaired or blind users

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Google Lookout app: Google’s lookout application received an update from the company earlier. This application is designed to help people with vision impairment. Now the application includes two new important features and more accessible design.

Lookout will be able to read food product labels when the user points the smartphone’s camera on it. The application will also guide the user to position the product for it to read it out loud.

The new food label mode is based on identifying the product with the help of images in the database rather than trying to recognize the text on the product. 

Google Lookout app

Google Lookout app – Another new feature is that users could submit snapshots of long documents or emails and the application will gather the content and read it for the user.

The application will be able to recognize currency notes but that feature is limit to dollar bills. The update also added new languages since its release in March 2019. The new languages are Italian, Spanish, German, and French.

The application is still unable to read roman alphabets like Arabic or Cyrillic. Users will also be able to scroll between the two important modes for the application. 

Before the application was only available to pixel users but now it is released for everyone with Android 6.0 or later and smartphones with 2GB RAM.

“Expanding this app to more people and devices is part of our commitment to make the world’s information universally accessible and to build helpful products with and for people with disabilities,”

Read More: GOOGLE MAPS UNABLE TO PROVIDE ADEQUATE TURN BY TURN NAVIGATION

Scott Adams, product manager on Google accessibility engineer team said in a blog post. On May 21, the global accessibility awareness day many silicon valley companies aimed to promote digital accessibility.

They do this to boost accessibility for millions of people that exist with many such disparities and to make others aware of it. Meanwhile, Google also announced a new earthquake detection app using android phones and a bedtime mode.

Posted in News | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Google rolling out Lookout app to help visually impaired or blind users