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Google’s Action Block Opens Up Pandora’s Box Of Possibilities





Google’s Action Block Opens Up Pandora’s Box Of Possibilities

Google celebrated the Global Accessibility Awareness Day on May 21 by introducing Action Blocks, it's the latest addition to access Google Assistant. The feature allows one to pre-write Google Assistant commands and place shortcuts to them on the home screen of the phone. 

The Action Block lets one name each action, type out a spoken command and assign it an image so that it is easily recognisable on the home screen. This feature has been launched with the aim of improving the Android user experience for people with cognitive disabilities. 

Generally, it is challenging for people with cognitive disabilities to navigate through the multi-step process required to operate many commonly used Android apps. Google hopes that this feature will help people with advanced dementia, autism and Down syndrome perform common tasks on the phone like calling friends and family, sharing location, listening to music and watching videos on YouTube. 

According to Ajit Narayanan, Accessibility Software Engineer at Google, they had to create a way to enable the use of Google Assistant for people that didn’t have a voice or for whom voice would be cognitively burdensome. An action block is just a block on the home screen that one can tap to ask the Assistant to do something for them.

Sulagna, an IT professional who has an eight-year-old son who was diagnosed with autism at the age of three told My City Links how Google has been a constant companion of her parenthood and said, “When my son was diagnosed with autism, I was a bit sad for the initial few weeks. But then I have always been an optimist and solution-oriented person so I sought to solve the challenges I faced with the help of Google.”

She further added, “I have always been a Google fan since my college days and I never knew it would become a personal part of my family. I have been using the Accessibility Suite for some time now and I love their focus on eyes-free solutions. I have been eagerly waiting for the Action Block since it was a beta and I am sure it will be of help to millions of people around the world.”

Over the years, Google has worked towards making its products inclusive and it has made many of its apps accessible to people with different kinds of disabilities. Action Block is an expansion of DIVA (DIVersely Assisted) whose purpose was to let people trigger commands to the Google Assistant without using voice.

It is easy to set up Action Blocks either through the Google Assistant or manually. You can choose from a list of predefined actions or you can type in your own actions. After you are done, save it as a button on the home screen with a display image of your choice. 

One can easily create widgets that allow them to watch movies, control home automation. Users can unlock the potential of their Android devices in a way that was earlier inaccessible to them. 

Action Block is available for download on the Play Store and it works with Android devices on Android 5.0 (Lollipop) and above.

Author: Debi prasad sahu

Debi is an auteur of minimalism and a connoisseur of world movies and music. He loves to go on gastronomic adventures and crack PJs. He writes poetry and is a hippie soul.

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