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Amazon has announced a new pair of accessibility features coming to devices with Eye Gaze on Alexa and a new call translation feature. Both are intended to bring accessibility enhancements to the Fire Max 11 tablet and will be rolling out later this year. The new features were announced as part of Amazon’s fall hardware event, where it also announced products like the new Echo Pop for kids, the new Echo Frames, and more.
The call translation feature will do exactly what it sounds like. It’ll transcribe Alexa calls on an Echo show device. Users can place an Alexa call and if the feature is enabled, they’ll see captions on the display so they can read what’s being said. The features multiple languages including English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Plus it’s arriving in multiple regions when it launches. Initially Amazon says it’ll be coming to users in the US, UK, Canada, Mexico, and a few countries in Europe. Including Spain, Germany, Italy, and France.
The company doesn’t mention when or if the feature will out to more regions. But the list of supported countries for Alexa is pretty large. So Amazon is probably just starting small here. With plans to roll the call translation out to other regions in the future.
Eye Gaze on Alexa will control your smart home with just a look
The other accessibility feature is Eye Gaze on Alexa. Though it can be used by anyone, it was designed with people that have mobility or speech disabilities in mind. The idea is that the feature will use your device’s camera to track where exactly you’re looking on the screen. Then translate that into an action to be performed.
With Eye Gaze users can do a small number of preset tasks including controlling smart home devices. You’ll also be able to make calls and control the playback of media. The feature is completely free and will be hitting the Fire Max 11 tablet later in 2023. Amazon didn’t mention an exact release date though.
Worth noting is that Amazon said this was “still early days of the technology.” Which suggests that there are likely to be quite a few changes or updates to it as time goes on and users could experience bugs or inconsistencies in how things work. However, Amazon also stated that it’s excited about the feature’s technological potential.