Amazon on Wednesday debuted a slew of new products, including two Fire HD 10 tablets for kids and a Fire TV Soundbar. The retail giant also spotlighted new Alexa features that fit into making its devices and services accessible to more customers.
One new feature is Eye Gaze on Alexa, which allows people with mobility or speech disabilities to use the usually voice-controlled assistant with their eyes. People will be able to gaze at their tablet to perform preset Alexa actions such as controlling their smart home, playing shows and music, and making calls. It'll be available later this year on the Fire Max 11 Tablet at no extra cost, Amazon said in a blog post.
Amazon also spotlighted Call Translation, a feature launching to Echo Show and Alexa mobile app users in the US, Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain later this year. Call Translation allows you to have your Alexa calls automatically translated through on-screen captions in over 10 languages, including English, French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.
"This helps all of our customers communicate more easily whether they identify as deaf or hard of hearing or have multilingual families," Heather Zorn, vice president of Alexa, said during Wednesday's event.
Eye Gaze is powered by state-of-the-art computer vision models that process data in real time, according to Amazon. Caretakers will choose colors, icons and Alexa actions that appear on the tablet screen as tiles. They'll also be able to create tiles that, when selected with a person's eyes, prompt Alexa to speak frequent words or phrases aloud.
People with Fire Max 11 will be able to enable the Eye Gaze on Alexa feature in the Accessibility settings section.