Resources for Developers and Publishers
Information and resources to help you develop accessible products and apps.
Developing for Accessibility
Google encourages developers and publishers to design and build products and applications with accessibility in mind.
1 billion people with disabilities
Making applications accessible not only ensures equal access to the roughly 1 billion people in the world with disabilities, but also benefits people without disabilities by allowing them to customize their experiences.
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Android
Native Accessibility Features
Android has an accessibility layer that helps blind and low vision users navigate their Android devices more easily. These services provide things like text-to-speech, haptic feedback and trackball/directional pad navigation that augment the user experience.
Android Developer Accessibility Resources
Android developers can learn to design and test for accessibility using the resources below. Accessibility testing tools can help you catch common mistakes like missing content descriptions, insufficient contrast, and undersized touch targets.
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Chrome
Supporting Assistive Technology
Chrome supports assistive technology, including many screen readers and magnifiers.
ChromeVox
Google has developed the ChromeVox screen reader for Chrome OS. ChromeVox is available for developers to use as an extension for Chrome on the desktop. This extension allows developers to test their web apps with a screen reader inside the browser so that they can experience their products as a blind user would and conduct better accessibility testing.
Chrome Extensions
Chrome Extensions are another way to make the browser more accessible for any user without needing to install external software. There are already great examples of accessibility extensions that allow users, including those with disabilities, to customize their experience. Learn how to design accessible extensions.
Chrome Developer Accessibility Resources
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YouTube Captioning
Options for Captioning
There are numerous ways to ensure your video has closed captions. You can add your own closed captions by uploading a caption file, creating a new caption file from scratch, or having YouTube automatically time your transcript. YouTube also automatically captions videos uploaded in supported languages, which you can then edit for accuracy. Visit our blog for more information on the general state of YouTube captioning.
YouTube Data API
For developers, the YouTube Data API makes it easy to interact with and upload captions. Check out the Open Source YouTube Caption Uploader project, which is a working example of how to use the API to interact with captions in YouTube, and can be used by anyone to upload multiple caption tracks for videos on a channel that they own.