This past week I have managed to successfully connect up a Google Home Mini to make voice activated calls to landlines and mobiles. I am still not sure how it does this but it did work for my client. The client has been waiting for Amazon to produce their Echo Connect. It was going to be autumn this year but nothing has appeared. We are still waiting. So when I heard that only this week in the UK they had made Google Home able to make (apparently) free phone calls to landlines and mobiles I thought this would solve my blind clients problems. And I am pleased to say it did!
Although I did find it difficult to add contacts . None of the instructions tell you this in the app or on the website. But it is working through Google Contacts which is via your google account. What is so cool is that my client has a kind of Verbal Aphasia which means she doesn’t get the right sounds for the words she wants to use which makes a voice activated device really, really hard to use. But the beauty of the Google Home Mini is that it actually allows you to create a custom label for
contacts which then connects via Google Search to actual real details of that person as listed by Google. Really neat, eh? And such a boom to those who may for various reasons such as Stroke or Parkinson’s cannot say the right word. Fascinating!
Here are some helpful notes which does explain how to make contacts, but also other useful things like showing your number to your caller so they know its you,
Today I purchased a Google Chromecast so I could try the voice control of netflix. Using the command ” play the crown on netflix” gets the Chromecast to play the chosen item. Only some items have audio description and this has to be pre-activated by a sighted person to get it to speak in audio description. My client requested the menu to be spoken but the Chromecast and the Echo Dot both can’t do that. This would be a fantastic feature to add to the device, Still what do you expect for £30! So for less than £60.00 you can have a tool that makes phone calls and control and run movies, some with audio description,
AccessAbility Solutions 