As many experts say, a comprehensive design of the assistant is not an effort to "do it all at once", especially in the technology industry. It needs to be a continuous, continuous effort to ensure that as new products and services are always created, those in need will not be left behind.
In 2022, we have seen important developments that could pave the way for more accessible designs in the future, such as the opening of Microsoft's Comprehensive Technology Lab.
In October, the University of Illinois (UIUC) in the US partnered with Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft in a voice support project to improve voice recognition for people with atypical voice types that AI algorithms rarely consider. But there have also been major failures, such as Elon Musk dissolving the assistant team on Twitter, in the context of everything else going on in that hell.
Throughout the industry, Engadget has recorded increased overall interest in accessible products and designs. Erran Berger said that there was an increase of about 33% last year in people who share details, ideas and work together to solve accessibility issues.
Amazon
Like most companies on this list, Amazon has updated some of its products across a variety of portfolios to provide better support capabilities. The company has added gesture support to its Echo Shows device, allowing users to turn off the alarm without touching the device.
It also added a hearing aid transmission assistant to its Fire TV platform and added the Tap To Speech (or Tap To Alexa) feature from its Fire tablet to the Echo Show screen.
Amazon also cooperates with a number of organizations to bring its products to communities that can benefit from them. The company has donated products such as Echos, Ring for home security devices, Home For Our Troops and Gary Sinise Foundation, helping to bring these products to US veterans.
The company also works with the National Association of the Blind in India by providing local headquarters with Echoes so that they can be used as a teaching aid for blind children.
Apple
As a leader in creating products with good assistant capabilities, Apple continued to do well in 2022. On the occasion of Global Assistance Abilities Day (GAAD), May 19, the company announced a new door detection feature for the iPhone, which will help blind or vision-poor people identify their access and read the signs or from there.
At the same time, the company has revealed Apple Watch Mirroring, allowing people with disabilities to control their smartwatches with the supported features of the iPhone. They include Voice Control, switch control, audio, and Exterior made For iPhone accessories.
Apple has also brought Live Captions to iPhone, iPad, and Mac. This feature will translate all content that is being streamed on the device, as well as the speech of people in the real world. The company has also added 20 new languages to the VoiceOver screen reader, as well as voice and language.
Google is currently playing an extremely important role on the internet. Because the company's product portfolio is very diverse, including smartphones, speakers, screens, browsers, applications, emails, to search capabilities, the company's reach is very large. That also means that Google often has more updates than any other name on the list.
On its products such as Android, Pixel, Chrome, Google search.., the company has implemented improvements to the screen reader, sub beginning and replacement text support, and many other assistant improvements.
Most of their work in 2022 revolves around expanding existing features to cover more platforms and languages. For example, in December, the company announced that the experimental voice recognition program that did not comply with Project Relate standards would expand to include Chinese.
