With Gestures, you can now interact with select Echo Show devices without having to touch the screen.
Amazon is adding three new accessibility features to the Echo Show lineup.
Here’s what’s new in touchscreen speakers with Alexa.
Gestures, voice synthesis, etc.
All three features were announced in an Amazon blog post.
First, gestures offer a new way to interact with Alexa without using your voice or touching the screen.
You can turn off the timers by raising your hand with your palm facing the Echo Show 8 Gen 2 or Echo Show 10 Gen 3 camera.
This can be activated directly on these Echo Show devices. Swipe down on the screen and choose Settings. Then head to Device Options and activate Gestures.
The Tap to Alexa feature is also improving. Previously, it allowed users to access Alexa with touch through touch shortcuts and the ability to create custom requests.
Now, Amazon has added text-to-speech functionality so users can type phrases and have them spoken out loud. You can quickly access shortcut tiles for common phrases, such as “I’m hungry”, and also customize them with icons and colors.
It can help a non-verbal or speech-impaired person communicate with other people at home.
Consolidated Captions allows users to enable all captioning options on Echo Show: Call Captioning, Closed Captioning, and Alexa Captioning. This will give access to all of your supported Echo Show devices.
All captioning options help users who are deaf or hard of hearing. Call Captioning brings captions for Alexa calls in real time while Alexa Captioning displays captions for Alexa responses. Closed captioning shows what is being said on videos like TV shows and movies.
To enable consolidated captions, swipe down from top and choose Settings. From there, select Accessibility so what Legends.
Earlier in December 2022, Amazon added Fire TV support for the largest Echo device, the Echo Show 15.
Make the Echo Show more accessible
Amazon has always worked to make the Echo Show range as accessible as possible with previous features like adaptive listening which gives users more time to finish speaking before hearing a response. And the three new features continue this work.
