Google Chrome Launches Accessibility Extensions Section

The Google Chrome extensions gallery is growing steadily and with more than 5,000 extensions to choose from, most people are going to find something interesting and useful. Google is now introducing a new extensions category designed specifically for those who have trouble navigating the regular web. The Accessibility section lists extensions that help people with special needs, like poor eye sight.

“Today we are launching a new category of featured extensions under the name ‘Accessibility’,” Jonas Klink, Accessibility Product Manager at Google, announced. “From text that is too small to read, to user interfaces that do not offer keyboard navigation options, users with special needs face a lot of challenges when trying to access websites they are interested in.”

“We believe that extensions can complement the work we are doing to make Google Chrome more accessible and can help users with disabilities turn the web from an often unwelcoming place to an environment they can truly enjoy,” he added.

Already, the new section houses several extensions which aim to solve some of the issues people with various disabilities are having. The newly launched ChromeVis extension, built by Google engineers, designed for people with low vision. ChromeVis enables users to select a portion of text on a web page and see it magnified and with high-contrast colors. The Chrome Daltonize extension is built specifically for color-blind people and alters the regular colors on a web page to make them distinguishable for those with color vision deficiency.

Some of the other extensions currently featured in the Accessibility section aren’t necessarily designed specifically as accessibility tools, but have features that make browsing easier and faster. For example, the Keyboard Navigation extension that aims to replace the need for a mouse. The Readability extension is another addition and it’s an interesting tool which re-formats web pages to make the actual content easier to read.