7 ways we’re making Android more accessible

In celebration of International Day of Persons with Disabilities tomorrow, we’re excited to share several new accessibility features on Android that make it easier to see your screen, communicate with others and interact with the world.

See your screen better with a new dark theme option

We’ve heard how frustrating it is to switch from a dark app to a glaring light one. With the new expanded option for dark theme in today’s Android 16 release, your phone will now automatically darken most of the apps on your device, even those that don’t have their own native dark theme. This creates a more consistent and comfortable viewing experience, especially for people with low vision or light sensitivity.

Understand more emotion behind captions

Expressive Captions uses AI to communicate things like tone, volume, environmental cues and human sounds from the audio playing on your device. Starting today, it can also detect and display the emotional tone of speech from the audio content on your Android device. This helps you grasp the speaker’s intent when captions are tagged with emotions like [joy] or [sadness], adding important context to the conversations and media.

And, after being built on Android, we’re bringing some of the capabilities of Expressive Captions to YouTube across all devices. Now videos in English uploaded after October will showcase a more immersive captions experience. Expressive Captions will use AI to automatically display the intensity of speech in all caps, expressions of sounds like sighs and gasps, as well as noises from the environment.

Click more easily with an external mouse

If you use a connected mouse with your Android device and experience pain or difficulty with the physical "click" action, AutoClick now offers an improved dwell cursor experience. This means you can set a custom amount of time for the cursor to pause on something before it automatically performs a click for you, reducing physical strain. You can also customize the action itself in the new click-type panel by choosing between left-click, right-click, double-click, long-press, scroll or drag.

Use voice dictation more easily with TalkBack

We’re making it easier to use voice dictation with TalkBack on Android. Launching soon, you will be able to start dictating in Gboard with a simple two-finger double-tap. From there, Smart Dictation will let you type and also edit your text using natural commands. Just say “replace Monday with Tuesday” to fix a date, or ask Gemini to “make it shorter.”

Capture photos with confidence

Guided Frame in the Pixel camera app helps people who are blind or low vision take great photos. Now powered by Gemini models, it provides a richer, more descriptive understanding of what’s in the camera’s view. You won’t just hear that there’s a face in the frame; you’ll hear a description like, “One girl with a yellow T-shirt sits on the sofa and looks at the dog.”

Go hands-free with Voice Access updates

Based on community feedback, we know that needing to physically tap your phone’s screen to start using Voice Access can be challenging. Now, once the feature is enabled on your device you can launch it directly with Gemini, just say “Hey Google, start Voice Access” and begin controlling your phone entirely hands-free.

Voice Access is also now available in Japanese. Plus, it’s better at understanding voice typing commands, including punctuation, as well as recognizing different accents and speech patterns automatically. It can even turn your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on and off.

Connect hearing aids with a single tap

Having a quick and straightforward way to pair your hearing aids with your Android device is essential to getting the full benefits of your phone. Now with Fast Pair, we’re making this more accessible and intuitive: With a single tap, you can easily connect your Bluetooth LE Audio-enabled hearing aids directly to your compatible Android device.

Available now on Demant hearing aids, we’ll be expanding compatibility to Starkey hearing technology in early 2026.