Chrome will soon be able to read PDFs to you “aloud”; here’s how

With this feature, Google Chrome wants to make PDFs more interactive (and above all more accessible).

After revealing five new features to come in Chrome, Google is now unveiling a brand new tool designed for people with visual impairments.

Google continues its accessibility efforts

In 2019, Google introduced image descriptions in Chrome. This feature then allowed people who use a screen reader to get unlabeled image descriptions. More recently, Google rolled out new accessibility features on Android for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. It is in the continuity of these steps that the Mountain View giant has now decided to move up a gear by making it easier for blind and visually impaired people to read documents.

To do this, Google has just announced the deployment of a tool that will read PDFs aloud. We will explain to you without further delay how it works.

Chrome will soon be able to convert your PDFs to text and read them aloud

Even today, many people with vision problems are unfortunately unable to access certain types of files. In order to remedy this, the American company is adding the possibility of converting images to text for PDFs in Chrome (on ChromeOS at first). As Google explains, “ when a screen reader user comes across a PDF that does not contain alt text (a description of the image embedded and readable by screen readers), the screen reader will be able to convert the image to text and read it aloud “.

Very practical, this functionality will be based more precisely on optical character recognition (OCR) technology. It will be rolled out in the coming months and should logically extend beyond ChromeOS in the future. Finally, as rightly pointed out by the site Engagement, this tool should make it possible to open the doors of accessibility on the Web a little more. While many efforts have been made in this direction in recent years, there is still a long way to go…

Source : Engage