You can now dismiss Echo Show timers with a wave | Engadget

Amazon is rolling out new Echo Show accessibility options at present. The firm introduced new gestures, text-to-speech (TTS) options and caption settings utilizing the system’s display screen to assist clients with disabilities.

The Echo Show 8 (2nd Gen) and Echo Show 10 (third Gen) now allow you to dismiss timers with a gesture. If a cooking timer goes off whereas your fingers are messy, you possibly can increase your palm in the direction of the digital camera to silence it. Of course, Alexa already supported dismissing timers with voice, however the hand-wave accommodates folks with speech disabilities (or those that don’t really feel like speaking to a pc).

The Echo Show can be including text-to-speech capabilities. Tap to Alexa, an accessibility hub that makes use of the touchscreen as a substitute of spoken instructions, now allows you to sort phrases for Alexa to learn aloud. Additionally, it will possibly create shortcuts for generally used phrases, which you’ll be able to set up with icons and colours. The TTS function was already obtainable on Fire tablets, however that is its Echo Show debut.

Finally, Consolidated Captions activates captions universally with out repeating the method on each system. Activating captions from the Echo Show’s accessibility settings now allows Call Captioning, Closed Captioning and Alexa Captioning on your whole account’s supported Echo Show units.

The updates arrive as Amazon reshuffles its priorities amid financial uncertainty. Last month, it started shedding workers, reportedly slicing round 10,000 jobs. Its Devices & Services division, which handles Echo Show and Alexa, reportedly bore the brunt of it. In October, Amazon additionally killed off Glow, its kid-focused video-calling system.