It’s great to see various platforms announce specific accessibility features on this Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
A feature that caught our attention today was Google’s Assistant-powered Action Blocks.
It’s a new app that allows users to create simple shortcuts to Actions they commonly perform. They are powered by Google Assistant, but allow for invocation through a tap.
We built this functionality into Aiqudo’s Q Actions when we launched it in 2017. Our approach is different in several ways:
- The user does not need to do any work, Q Actions does it automatically for the user
- Q Actions builds these dynamically – your most recently used Actions, and your favorite ones are automatically tracked for you – you just need to say “show my actions”
- These handy Action shortcuts are available to you with one swipe to the right in the Q Actions app. One tap to invoke your favorite action.
- There’s no new app, just for accessibility – it’s built in to your Assistant interface for convenience – you just need to say “Hello Q, show my Actions”
- There are hundreds of unique high-utility Actions you can perform that are not available in any other platform, including Google Assistant. Here are a few examples:
- “whose birthday is it today?” (Facebook)
- “show my orders” (Amazon, Walmart)
- “start meditating” (Headspace)
- “watch the Mandalorian” (Disney+)
- “watch Fierce Queens” (Quibi)
- “show my tasks” (Microsoft To Do, Google Tasks)
- “show my account balances” (Etrade)
- “join my meeting with my camera off” (Google Hangouts, Zoom)
- “call Mark” (Whatsapp, Messenger, Teams, Slack,…)
- “send money to John” (PayPal)
- . and on and on and on…
It’s just easier, better and more powerful!
And available to everyone!
