Two years ago, Google launched an amazing Android app that helps people who might feel isolated from the world by paralysis or incapacitating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to communicate in a relatively normal way. The app is called Look to Speak, and it utilizes a phone’s front-facing camera to follow a user’s eyes as they move from left to right, picking from a list of words and phrases that the phone then reads aloud via text-to-speech. On Sunday night, Google ran a moving ad for Look to Speak during the 2022 Academy Awards.
The minute-long ad is striking from the first frame, featuring multiple cinematic close-ups of individuals’ eyes. It then ends with a scene featuring the app in use by a woman who can’t speak, demonstrating how she directs her eyes to phrases on the screen in order to communicate.
Look to Speak was created by Google Creative Lab and it received a major update late last year so it could work with more languages than just English. It will work on phones running Android 9 and newer and you can get it from the Play Store below.
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