Google Maps now offers improved voice guidance to help people with visual impairments

Google Maps today announced a new improvement that will help people with vision impairments to navigate more easily in real world. Google Maps will now offer more detailed voice guidance and new types of verbal announcements for walking trips. Google Maps will proactively tell users whether they are on the correct route, the distance until their next turn and the direction they are walking in. If users accidentally divert from their route, they will get notified by Google Maps.

Frequent updates like these not only help a visually impaired person get from A to B, they can also give users more confidence and reassurance when they travel alone.

Google is rolling out this detailed voice guidance for walking navigation on Android and iOS from today. Right now, this feature will work only in English in the United States and Japanese in Japan. Google will bring support for additional languages and countries in the future.

Here’s how you can enable this feature:

To turn the feature on, go to your Google Maps settings and select “Navigation.” At the bottom of the list you’ll find the option to enable “Detailed voice guidance,” beneath the “Walking options” heading.

Source: Google