Use the built-in accessibility features of your speaker, display, and the Google Home app to customize your smart home experience.
Contents
- Turn on your smart speaker or display’s accessibility features
- Use cognitive, mobility, and vision enhancement features
- Use your smart display’s vision enhancement features
- Use your smart speaker or display’s hearing enhancement features
- Use your smart display’s interaction features
Turn on your smart speaker or display’s accessibility features
Use the Google Home app on your phone or tablet to adjust accessibility settings for your speaker or display.
- Make sure your display and phone or tablet are linked to the same account.
- Open the Google Home app
.
- Tap Home
All devices
, then tap your display's tile.
- Tap Settings
Accessibility.
- Change the settings as desired.
Use cognitive, mobility, and vision enhancement features
Use voice assistant features to learn, control your home devices, and listen to media. For more info, go to:
Use your smart display’s vision enhancement features
These features assist you if you have a visual impairment, from low vision to blindness.
- Color correction: Adjust your smart display’s colors using color correction to help with color blindness.
- Color inversion: Your screen colors will be reversed. For example, you’ll see white text on a black screen instead of black text on white.
- Magnify screen: Triple tap your screen to magnify your display. Triple tap and hold with one finger to temporarily enable the magnifier.
- Play start sound: You'll get a sound when your smart display hears "Ok Google" or "Hey Google."
- Play end sound: You'll get a sound when your smart display finishes listening to your request.
- Audio descriptions: You'll hear descriptions of what's happening in your video.
Tip: This only works if your video provides audio descriptions. - Screen reader: Your smart display provides speech feedback when you tap your screen.
Tip: This changes how your touchscreen and gestures work.
Turn on your screen reader
- Make sure your display and mobile device or tablet are linked to the same account.
- Open the Google Home app
.
- Tap Home
All devices
, then tap your display's tile.
- Tap Settings
Accessibility.
- Turn on Screen reader.
Find and read items on your current screen
- Explore items: Move one finger along your screen and you’ll hear the highlighted item read aloud.
- Know what's on your screen: Tap your screen with one finger.
- Select the next item and read it: Swipe right with one finger.
- Select the previous item and read it: Swipe left with one finger.
Activate and interact with items on your screen
- Open or activate a selected item: Double tap your screen with one finger.
- Secondary action on an item: Double-tap with one finger and then touch and hold on the second tap.
- Adjust a slider: When you select a slider, swipe up or down with one finger to move into slider adjust mode.
- Swipe left or right with one finger to adjust the slider’s value.
- Swipe up or down to return into default navigation mode.
Go to a different screen or start ambient mode
- Go back to the previous screen: Swipe right with 3 fingers.
- Navigate between screens: Swipe left or right with 3 fingers.
- Return to Home screen: From ambient mode, swipe left with 3 fingers.
- Start screensaver (ambient mode): From the Home screen, swipe right with 3 fingers.
Access global settings or control panels
- Open quick settings: Swipe up with 3 fingers.
- Close quick settings: Swipe down with 3 fingers.
- Navigate to Home Control: Swipe down with 3 fingers.
Silence audio responses
- Silence your screen reader’s speech: Touch and hold the screen with 2 fingers.
- Silence your voice assistant’s speech: Touch and hold the screen with 2 fingers.
Android phone or tablet
Turn on TalkBack, the Google screen reader service that’s pre-installed on your Android device, to start spoken feedback immediately. If you don’t have it, download it in the Google Play Store. Learn more about TalkBack.
iPhone or iPad
Use VoiceOver instead. For more info, go to Turn on and practice VoiceOver on iPhone.
Use your smart speaker or display’s hearing enhancement features
Enable these settings to experience better audio and communication from your smart speaker or display.
- Make sure your display and mobile device or tablet are linked to the same account.
- Open the Google Home app
.
- Tap Home
All devices
, then tap your display's tile.
- Tap Settings
Accessibility.
- Turn on Closed captioning.
- Turn Video content or Voice assistant’s voice on to use captions for each feature. Additional settings include:
- Font size: Adjust the font size or choose a custom size by tapping and moving the slider either left or right to adjust the text size.
- Caption style: Choose between white on black, black on white, yellow on black, yellow on blue, cyan on black, or custom. Custom style will allow you to adjust:
- Font: Font type, font color, font style, and font opacity
- Background: Background color, background opacity
- Window: Window color, window opacity
You can also use voice commands. Say “Ok, Google” or “Hey, Google” then “Turn on captions.”
Tip: You can only use captions on videos that have closed captioning.
- Open the Google Home app
.
- Verify that the Google Account shown is the one linked to your Google device.
- If correct, tap Close
to exit the account window.
- To switch accounts, tap the drop down
another account or Add another account.
- If correct, tap Close
- Tap Home
All devices
, then tap your display's tile.
- Tap Settings
Audio.
- Change the settings as desired.
Use your smart display’s interaction features
These features let you customize how you interact with your device.