Launched in December last year, Look to Speak is an accessibility app that enables users to communicate by simply using their eyes. A project from Experiments with Google, this app tracks eye movements to select pre-written phrases and for their phone to speak out loud. It’s a handy tool for people with varied types of disabilities. For example, fully paralyzed people who cannot speak or move their limbs can use this app to communicate with their loved ones as well as other people via eye movements. About a year into launch, the Look to Speak app has received more than 50,000 installs on the Google Play Store. It has also received mostly positive reviews from users, suggesting that it’s doing a decent job. Now, the team behind this project has rolled out a new update (via) to the app, adding support for more languages. With the new additions, many more people around the world should find Look to Speak useful to them.
Look to Speak app updated to support more languages
Look to Speak is a pretty useful app for people who may need it. Of course, there exist more advanced assistive machines that enable differently-abled users to communicate with others fairly easily and this app can’t replace them. But it does a decent job too. And it’s way more portable and cheaper as well. All you need is an Android smartphone running Android 9.0 Pie or higher. This app uses the device’s front camera to track your eye movements. The interface features two columns of common words and phrases. You first need to locate the desired phrase on the screen and accordingly move your eyes left or right to narrow down on it. Once you have selected a phrase, the phone will speak it out loud. Look to Speak lets you rearrange the phrases as well as add new ones or remove them. You can also adjust the gaze sensitivity and duration. The app uses your phone’s built-in TTS (text-to-speech) voice to speak out the selected phrases. You can click the button below to download the latest version of the Look to Speak app from the Google Play Store. DOWNLOAD LOOK TO SPEAK