"Yessssss!": Google updates Expressive Captions for Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Held annually on the third Thursday of May, this year's Global Accessibility Awareness Day is not noticed just by Apple (as we told you mere hours ago), but by Google as well.

The company has announced a series of upgrades designed to make its products easier to use for everyone, including people with disabilities of various sorts. The updates span across Android, Chrome, and Chromebook platforms, so nobody gets left behind. The focus is on improving how users interact with text, media, and images.

One of the most notable updates is to Expressive Captions (this one debuted in late 2024), a feature that adds real-time subtitles to videos or audio that lack captions. Google had previously enhanced this tool to better reflect emotion and sound effects – such as showing "shouting" in capital letters. LIKE THIS.

Now, the company is taking it a step further. The latest version of Expressive Captions can recognize more types of sounds and better mimic drawn-out expressions, like stretching words for emphasis. For example, it can now display "Yesssssss!", extending letters to reflect how it was said.



Another big change involves Android’s TalkBack screen reader. Last year, Google integrated AI capabilities into TalkBack to describe images using on-device processing. This year, the feature is becoming more interactive. Users can now ask follow-up questions about what's on the screen (yes, including images) and TalkBack will respond with additional details. This makes screen reading more natural and helpful for visually impaired users.

Google is also tackling the long-standing accessibility challenges of PDF files. While some PDFs are formatted with readable text, others are just scanned images, making them difficult or impossible for screen readers to interpret. To solve this, Chrome for desktop will now be able to apply optical character recognition (OCR) to these image-based PDFs. This means the browser can identify and extract text from them, allowing users to listen to the content or copy the text with ease.

On Android, Chrome is improving Page Zoom features. These changes aim to make sure that zoomed-in web pages still look clean and organized, without broken layouts or overlapping elements. Users will also be able to save specific zoom settings for different websites, helping them maintain a consistent and readable browsing experience. This is extremely helpful, in my humble opinion.

Outside of these main updates, Google shared additional accessibility improvements in its broader ecosystem. These include new tools for students using Chromebooks and expanded speech-recognition technology that better understands diverse speech patterns and languages.