A friend of mine asked me: Is Google Home good for the blind?
He was thinking about giving her grandmother a gift for her 75 birthday a Google Home.
She is struggling a lot by living with this condition, and my friend thought it would be an awesome idea to help her connect with the world better.
Essentially, Google Home is a smart device that has numerous capabilities to help blind people to connect to their environment cleverly. It becomes a helpful tool to know important information about the day such as the weather, the latest news, and the appointments for the day.
As you can see, this smart speaker it’s a perfect solution for the blind. If you have someone in your social circle that needs a boost in their lives you should go for it!
In this blog post, you will learn how you can improve someone’s life connecting them to a smart hub!
Google Home Location and installation
As you already thinking to get Google home as a gift
You should also consider the installation.
Because even though it can be easy if you own a Smartphone with Google Assistant working, it can be a hassle for the blind person to do this by themselves
Don’t worry though, this process it’s super simple
You just need to put it in place of their homes where Wi-Fi has a good connection.
You can use your cellphone to check if it has a strong signal or not.
Once you found the perfect spot, think about that it needs to be all the time connected.
And that cable can be dangerous to be lying around! Put it in a safe place before moving on with the installation
After that, you just need to install an app Google Home.
Whether you have Android or iOS, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Once installed, please follow this guide to know exactly how to add devices to your Google Home app
The Google Home App can be tricky sometimes to deal with. I’ve added images and lots of useful tips.
After having your Google Home ready to use.
You can start to show the person how it can use it for their advantage!
Google Home smart speaker capabilities for the blind
Useful features for the blind
- Google routines: In my opinion, this is one of the best features for the blind. Just by saying “Good morning Google” it will automatically tell you about the weather, The latest news, and appointments for the day.
Google Home can help you schedule reminders and all sorts of alarms to help them remember something at a specific time
- Ask at what time a tv show starts: If the blind person that you are assisting loves tv shows, it can be extremely fun to see them asking at what time it starts.
- Stream old music for them!: Another super useful feature. It doesn’t matter what type of music your relative or friend loves, with google home they can hear it at any time
But let me tell you something. Google home requires that you have a monthly subscription with Spotify or Youtube Music so it can stream music without stopping.
But if you like technology and have a couple of minutes, you can go to this guide here where I show you how to stream music for free on your Google Home
- You can call your phone: It’s just marvelous how useful it can be Google Home for the blind. Let’s think he or she loses their phone! It can happen!
With just saying:
“Ok Google, Ring/call my phone”
It will make it sound so you can find it. Even for me has proven to be extremely helpful.
- Contacting Pharmacies: If the blind person has another health condition, Google Home can tell them directly at what time the nearest Walgreens closes so they can schedule to go.
Or even better, just by saying: “Ok Google, call the nearest drug store”,
They can even ask for medicine to be sent to their homes. Super handy as well.
- Tell jokes and bible verses: As google’s assistant is so intuitive and interactive, the blind person is going to love it for sure. It can tell jokes, by just asking: Ok Google, tell me a math/smart/funny joke. The possibilities are endless.
If they want to hear Bible verses, it’s super simple as well:
You just need to install a free bible app from this list and ask to google home:
“Ok Google, talk to Youversion” and it will then ask if you want to hear a specific verse.
- In general, Google home It’s incredibly useful for the blind. It can virtually answer any kind of questions and if it doesn’t know the answer it will go straight to google and search for it.
I wrote a guide of 200 Google Assistant commands that you could look into for more ideas.
But what I want you to know is that you don’t need to learn the commands as they were as a rule.
You can make numerous variations of the same question leading to the answer, so just try to have fun with it!
Google home or google home mini?
Which is better for a blind person?
Both devices work incredibly fast and interactive.
You can do the same voice commands on both devices.
But if the blind person that wants to own it or you just considering to giving it as a present
Just keep in mind that Google Home delivers a better and louder sound quality compared to Mini.
So by any chance, they have also a hearing disability, your best choice would be to go for the Google Home.
Without being too technical about it, Google Home will sound around twice louder compared to Google Home mini
So if the want also to listen to music, go for Google Home!
Key configuration
Installing google home as you already saw it’s super simple.
But specifically for the blind person
I would strongly recommend making the following modification to the app so it can work even better:
- Go to the Google Home App
- Go to devices
- Tap the three dots
- Go to Settings
- Accessibility
- Turn all sounds on
This is useful in case someone is interacting physically with Google Home.
Now, all the buttons that are on it will make noises for them to know if it’s working or not.
Conclusion
Google home is an extremely helpful tool for the blind.
It lets them be in contact with the world in such a cool futuristic way that it is hard not to love it.
But a word of advice here.
Perhaps the person with this disability won’t like it as much as you think.
You need to show them how it can improve their lives in numerous ways!
It’s time for you to help your relative or friend the way they deserve.
With a cool gadget to make their home a safer and cooler place to live.