Small Features, Big Impact: Google's Approach to Empowering the Visually Impaired

After attending Google I/O, I made several special observations:

1. There were many people with mobility impairments 👩‍🦽, but they could experience various activities without any obstacles.
2. There were exclusive gifts 🎁 for female developers.

Additionally, while chatting with designers from Google's HCI team, I heard a touching story:

They have a visually impaired colleague on their team. During the pandemic, she had difficulty taking photos for facial recognition login. So, during an internal hackathon (yes, you heard right! They hold hackathons within departments 👾), they created a small project mainly to help visually impaired people take selfies.

When the user's face moves off-screen or to the edge, the app provides voice prompts to guide the user to adjust the camera. Once the face is stable, the camera automatically takes the photo without needing to click.

Then, Google actually launched this feature!

According to backend analysis, 93% of visually impaired users proactively enabled this feature, and 73% actually used it (note that this feature isn't enabled by default).

This seemingly small thing is actually of great significance. For the visually impaired, it truly turns the impossible into possible.

It's worth noting that visually impaired people rely heavily on hearing when using electronic devices. They essentially "see" things through sound (which is why they've generally mastered the ability to listen to audio at three times the normal speed or faster).

Unlike us, they can't easily find a button. They rely entirely on sliding their fingers across the screen and understanding button functions through voice prompts, which obviously makes it very easy to touch things accidentally.

Therefore, for the visually impaired, the best update is one they don't notice, or even no update at all. Because every time software and systems update, they have to re-adapt to the operations, a process that is truly arduous for them. (This is also why the new feature mentioned above isn't set to be enabled by default)

Finally, here's a surprising statistic: in China, on average, one in every 15 people has a disability.

I hope society will pay more attention to them in the future 🙏

PS: p1 shows some content our small group wrote down during the HCI Workshop. p2 is a silhouette I casually photographed at the Capital Airport, giving a sense of walking towards the light, which somehow fits the theme