Google Announces Accessibility Improvements for ChromeOS and Workspace in Education

In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Google today announced several accessibility updates to ChromeOS and Google Workspace. The firm is also highlighting its partnership with inABLE and the work they are doing to bring Chromebooks to teachers and students in schools for children who are blind or have low vision in Kenya.

“Working with people with disabilities helps us understand their needs and enables us to incorporate their feedback back into our products to improve them for everyone,” Google Emerging Markets Accessibility & Disability Inclusion Lead Sara Basson writes in the announcement post. “Members of the team are currently in Kenya, and last week they trained 25 teachers at the Likoni School for the Visually Impaired. Early feedback is very positive and tells us that students are able to access much more content than was locally available in paper and braille. The students are able to customize their experience with the assistive technology features that work best for them, and they’re enthusiastic about learning.”

As Google notes, ChromeOS already includes built-in screen reading capabilities with ChromeVox, Select-to-speak capabilities, and compatibility with Braille devices. But it is adding the following accessibility features across ChromeOS and Google Workspace over the coming weeks to improve the platform’s accessibility features further.

Screen magnifier improvements. In a coming ChromeOS update, the Screen magnifier will be updated to automatically follow the words as you read text aloud using Select to speak, so you don’t lose your place.

Mouse cursor size improvements. Those with low vision will soon be able to adjust the size of the mouse cursor to be much larger (or smaller) using a new slider in Settings.

Text cursor improvements. Similarly, you will soon be able to disable the blinking text cursor, which will help those with photosensitive seizure triggers and cognitive differences.

Simpler keyboard shortcuts and keyboard navigation in Google Drive. Google Drive now supports first-letter navigation so that you can more easily locate files while using a screen reader, braille device, or screen magnification. You can move the focus in a list of files by typing the first letter of a file name and the keep typing the same letter to move to the next file that starts with the same letter.

Dark mode for Google Drive. You can now reverse the default color scheme in Google Drive on the web to use light text on a dark background, helping reduce eye strain and improve reading.

You can learn more about Google’s accessibility work on the Google Education website.