We can all appreciate faster laptops, bigger TVs, and thinner phones, but technology can do a lot more than just make our individual lives easier and more fun. Digital Trends’ Tech for Change series, presented by Toyota, celebrates the ways the technology is changing all of society for the better, from protecting fragile ecosystems to lifting up groups with disabilities, and sometimes even just bringing a fractured, distracted society back together. This year, we’ve recognized companies across five different categories that are all making a positive impact on the world through technology.
Mobile: Google’s Project Gameface for Android
Accessibility features for Android phones aren’t anything new in 2024. Whether we’re talking about ways to control your phone with your voice or settings to change your screen’s font, contrast, or color, there are ample ways to make your smartphone easier to use. But at Google I/O earlier this year, Google cranked Android’s accessibility features up to 11 with the launch of Project Gameface.
The goal of Project Gameface? To allow people to control their Android smartphone using facial gestures and head movements. Using these, Project Gameface enables you to control all aspects of an Android phone without ever touching it — such as going to your home screen, viewing your notifications, pausing media playback, and even moving a virtual cursor on the screen. All of it is done with cues like raising eyebrows, smiling, and even opening your mouth.
Not only is all of this really technically impressive, it also makes Android devices more accessible to people who have difficulty using their phone with their hands or voice. And Project Gameface doesn’t require any special hardware to work. So long as you have an existing Android phone, you’re good to go. Powerful accessibility tools are one thing, but making them widely accessible to people on devices they already have makes them all the more important.
Project Gameface is currently only available as a developer tool, with a full, public release date currently unknown. Even so, it’s an extremely impressive look at how Google really is trying to make Android accessible to everyone.
by Joe Maring
A/V: Auracast Broadcast Audio
You’d be forgiven if you thought we’d reached peak Bluetooth, the basic technology that allows you to listen to pretty much anything wirelessly has been around forever. While it’s certainly improved on the margins, the end-user experience is pretty much the same. Pair your headphones or speaker, fire up music or a podcast or whatever, and listen away.
Auracast is both a step into the future and a reminder of things past — namely old-school, over-the-air radio. (Which, by the way, is still a thing.) Put simply, Auracast is a fledgling feature that allows for short-range sharing of audio via Bluetooth.
Picture a TV in a gym, either on the wall or built into a workout machine like a treadmill or elliptical. Auracast removes the traditional barrier of pairing the host device with your earbuds or headphones. By simply scanning a QR code or tapping your phone — like when you use your phone to pay for something — you’ll have your own private audio feed.
For users with hearing impairments, Auracast could be even more than a convenience. Imagine the cacophony of the typical American airport, where you may strain to hear gate announcements and other audio cues. Auracast could deliver them directly to in-ear headphones, over the screaming baby. Or think of guided museum audio tours — wouldn’t they be better with your own headphones? You can even imagine this sort of tech being implemented in smart glasses in the very near future.
It’s early days for Auracast and the hardware that supports it, but even the initial uses are incredibly promising.
by Phil Nickinson
Gaming: ByoWave Proteus Controller
With each passing year, the video game industry gets more serious about accessibility. We’ve seen companies like Xbox and Sony putting a wider suite of options into their games to make sure players can tweak settings to their specific needs. That’s a great start, but it needs to go hand-in-hand with hardware to be truly effective. Effective accessibility hardware is a complicated task that calls for innovation, and that’s exactly what ByoWave is aiming for with the Proteus Controller.
Created in partnership with Microsoft, the Proteus Controller is unlike any gamepad you’ve ever seen. It features a fully modular design that lets players easily snap parts off and reassemble them to their liking. The kit comes with cubes, sticks, and swappable buttons to make that possible. It’s almost as if Lego made a video game controller. That’s a powerful premise, as ByoWave says that players can build “over 100 million traditional and custom configurations” with the tool kit. With a system like that, a one-handed player could potentially create a gamepad by stacking four cubes into a stack lined with buttons, a square, or more creative shapes.
It’s an important development for accessibility hardware, which is rarely a one-size-fits-all solution. Even a tool as powerful as Sony’s Access Controller has its shortcomings. Proteus looks to solve for even more use cases with its modular approach, which could change the way video game controllers are made. The product even earned an official “designed for Xbox” label, showing Microsoft’s own support and commitment to third-party accessibility options. Tools like this make gaming more inclusive, ensuring that everyone can play.
by Giovanni Colantonio
Computing: Microsoft Surface Pro Flex Keyboard Bold
Microsoft has been making PCs more accessible for years now, most notably with its Adaptive Accessories, the modular, 3D-printed accessories that replicate functions of the mouse and keyboard for people of varying degrees of physical abilities.
One small way of taking that same ethos to its mainstream products is the Surface Pro Flex Keyboard Bold. The wireless keyboard attachment is one of the new options to pair with the Surface Pro 11th Edition, and the “bold” in the name is simple enough — it’s a black keyboard with a very large white typeface. Off the top of my head, there are a couple of vision-impaired people in my life who immediately come to mind that could really benefit from a keyboard like this.
That’s not to mention the biggest new addition to what this keyboard can do: function while being disconnected. In the past, the keyboard only worked when connected through the pogo pins on the bottom of the tablet. Now, you can disconnect and still have access to that keyboard and trackpad. This opens up all kinds of new positions and ergonomic situations that weren’t possible in the past, especially for those who need a device that can adapt to their physical needs with a bit more control.
With an OLED screen and efficient Snapdragon X processor, the Surface Pro 11th Edition is the best version of the device there’s ever been. With the Flex Keyboard Bold, now even more people can easily use it.
by Luke Larsen
Entertainment: 4DX theater effects
In the last 15 years, IMAX has been the preferred format for exhibitors and audiences alike in the race to win over the hearts and minds of increasingly distracted audiences. But a relatively new technology has emerged recently that’s rattling viewers out of their TikTok feeds and getting them to share in the communal viewing experience: 4DX.
Think of it as a more immersive 3D. It offers viewers the choice, via multiple buttons near their seat, to immerse themselves with practical effects that mimic the visual experience they are watching.
These effects are divided into three groups: seat effects, near-seat effects, and room effects. Seat effects tend to simulate motion, so if you’re watching Brad Pitt ride atop a speeding train in Bullet Train, the chair will rumble. Near-seat effects show up in movies like Twisters, where you’ll feel the wind and rain of a tornado whipping at your face. Finally, room effects utilize bubbles, fog, and strobe lights, to mimic different types of weather or create the illusion of another city, country, or world.
While 4DX isn’t new this year, it’s getting a foothold like never before. Filmmakers like Top Gun: Maverick’s Joseph Kosinski and Lightyear’s Angus MacLane are increasingly involved in the process so that their work can be augmented, and not overwhelmed, by the technology. At a time when the movie business is still reeling from the effects of COVID, streaming, and guild strikes, 4DX technology is the best bet yet to convince audiences to shell out their hard-earned money to see the latest MCU adventure or Mission: Impossible chapter. It makes the theatrical experience a truly unique one, one that just can’t be replicated at home.
by Jason Struss
About our sponsor
Toyota (NYSE:TM), creator of the Prius hybrid and the Mirai fuel cell vehicle, is committed to building vehicles for the way people live through our Toyota and Lexus brands, and directly employs more than 63,000 people in North America (more than 49,000 in the U.S.).
Over the past 65 years, Toyota has assembled nearly 47 million cars and trucks in North America at the company’s 12 manufacturing plants. By 2025, the company’s 13th plant in North Carolina will begin to manufacture automotive batteries for electrified vehicles.
Through our more than 1,800 North American dealerships (nearly 1,500 in the U.S.), Toyota sold more than 2.6 million cars and trucks (more than 2.2 million in the U.S.) in 2023, of which more than one quarter were electrified vehicles (full battery, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and fuel cell).
