Helpful technology enables everyone to pursue their goals.
Features to help people identify and support inclusive spaces on Google Maps and Search
Features to help people identify and support inclusive spaces on Google Maps and Search
Learn about the business attributesBusiness attributes to help people identify and support inclusive spaces on Google Maps and Search
We’ve added features to Google Maps and Search that help people find the spaces they need, and support diversely owned businesses.
-
Accessible Places lets wheelchair users and anyone who has difficulty using stairs know in advance whether their destination will be accessible. Wheelchair accessible routes help people find an accessible way to get where they’re going.
-
Business attributes like “LGBTQ-friendly,” “Transgender safespace,” and “Gender-neutral restroom” help businesses identify as spaces of belonging and safety for LGBTQ+ communities.
-
The Women-owned, Black-owned, Latino-owned, and Veteran-owned attributes make it easier for customers and community members to identify and support diversely owned businesses across Google platforms.
An Android tool that enables people with communication difficulties to connect in real time
Learn about Live TranscribeHow Live Transcribe is enabling real-time communication
Live Transcribe is a feature designed for Android and powered by Google’s speech recognition software, which generates live captions for your voice in over 70 languages and dialects. We partnered with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, the first and largest technological college in the world for students who are deaf or hard of hearing, to make sure that Live Transcribe was helpful for everyday use.
An evolving emoji library to better reflect the world
Read about our work (Opens in a Dialog Window)How we’re evolving our emoji to be more inclusive and better reflect the world
Emoji are a way to express identity, which is why we have continually worked to evolve our emoji designs for Android to inclusively and authentically reflect the world and the fluidity of identity. Here are some key changes we’ve made over the years:
-
In 2016, we proposed new emoji that pushed past stereotypical imagery to better represent the professional roles that women play in the world.
-
In May 2019, we led the industry by introducing 53 gender-inclusive, nonbinary emoji, using non-gendered colors that expand beyond the conventional pink or blue palette.
-
In 2020, we continued our focus on bringing equity to the keyboard with proposals to Unicode that better represented families, added the trans pride flag, and more.
-
In 2021, a new shaking hand emoji created 25 combinations of skin tones, thanks to the perseverance of Jennifer Daniel (she/her), Google’s creative director for emoji.
Improving skin tone representation in products with the Monk Skin Tone scale
Learn about our efforts (Opens in a Dialog Window)Improving skin tone representation in our products with the Monk Skin Tone scale
Machine Learning (ML), a type of Artificial Intelligence (AI), is the bedrock of many Google products. This technology can help make people’s everyday lives easier, but when the algorithms are built with data sets that don’t represent everyone, they can fail to “see” and “understand” people with darker skin. At Google, we’re working to improve image equity and skin tone representation across our products. Here’s how:
-
Google’s Research Center for Responsible AI and Human-Centered Technology partnered with Harvard professor and sociologist Dr. Ellis Monk, who has been studying the effects of skin tone and colorism for over a decade. In 2022, we openly released the Monk Skin Tone (MST) Scale — an alternative 10-shade scale that is more inclusive than the current tech-industry standard.
-
We’re incorporating the MST Scale into a number of products, starting with Search. Now, when people search the web for images, such as “bridal makeup looks,” they’ll see an option to further refine their result by skin tone, making it easier to find what’s relevant. To build on improving a representative Search experience, we’re developing a standardized way to label content online so creators, brands, and publishers can use this new inclusive schema to tag their content with attributes like skin tone, hair color and hair texture, prompting more aligned results.
-
We’re also bringing the MST Scale into Google Photos. We previously worked with renowned image makers and improved Google Photos’ auto enhance feature to strengthen face detection, camera, and editing products through Real Tone. Most recently, we launched a new set of Real Tone filters with a wider assortment of looks that are available across Android, iOS and Web.
-
We’re open-sourcing the MST Scale to support inclusive research and development in the AI and ML space, so the tech industry at large can build more representative datasets, collectively improve ML models, and develop products that truly work for everyone.
-
We’ll continue working with Dr. Monk to evaluate the MST scale across different regions and products, iterating, and improving the technology. Learn more about our efforts at skintone.google.
Photo controls designed to respect the experiences of transgender people
Learn about Google Photos controlsChoose the memories you revisit with Google Photos controls.
We heard from the transgender community that resurfacing certain photos can be painful, so we’ve been working with our partners at GLAAD and listening to feedback to make reminiscing more inclusive. We’re using AI to power new features that resurface meaningful moments, while giving you control over what you revisit. Google Photos already includes controls to hide photos of certain people or time periods, and we’re continuing to add new ones to improve the experience through this continued partnership.
A suite of tools to protect and uplift Indigenous communities
Learn about the featuresTools to uplift and protect Indigenous communities
Many Indigenous communities must overcome decades of underfunding and structural racism as they build toward the future. Here are a few examples of ways we’re uplifting these resilient communities through our tools:
-
In collaboration with over 40 cultural institutions, we created the Indigenous Americas hub, a celebration of Indigenous art and culture that spans beyond the U.S. and across the Americas.
-
Our Google Earth tour, Celebrating Indigenous Languages, shares audio recordings from more than 50 Indigenous language speakers with the aim of helping save Indigenous languages around the world from extinction.
-
We’re keeping Indigenous languages alive by adding them to Google Translate.
-
With Support from the Google Aboriginal and Indigenous Network, the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development used Google tools to build a set of Nation Building Toolboxes to help tribal nations connect and share solutions related to subjects like Business Enterprises, Constitutional Reform, Justice Systems, and COVID-19 recovery and distance learning.
-
The Navajo Nation is using Plus Codes in Google maps to provide addresses for its residents, improving their access to emergency health services and mail deliveries. Plus Codes have been used to support people around the world who do not have street addresses.
Google employee’s quote
Annie Jean-Baptiste (she/her) Head of Product Inclusion & Equity, Google
Read the transcript (Opens in a Dialog Window)
“I’ve always been navigating a world that wasn’t necessarily made with me in mind. I’m a Black Haitian American woman. And it affects how I move through the world, how I interact with products and services. We all come from our own lived experiences, and so with product inclusion, it’s really looking end to end at the design and development process and saying: Who else needs to be in the room? Who else do we need to have perspective from? And I think co-creating is really integral to building a product that actually suits the world.”
Co-creation drives our best work.
How image experts helped us build our most equitable camera
A range of expert image-makers helped our teams create our Real Tone™ camera technology to ensure all people, particularly people with darker skin tones, feel accurately and beautifully seen in photos.
How we worked with the disability community to improve our speech recognition technology
How our employee resource groups brought an inclusive lens to a core product
Google employee’s quote
Dimitri Kanevsky (he/him) Research Scientist, Google
Read the transcript (Opens in a Dialog Window)
“I was born in Russia. I lost hearing at a very early age. What helped me to belong is my wife, who was always with me to help me to communicate. Then, my children. Then it was speech recognition technology that I helped to develop that allowed me full communication. It allowed me full belonging to society.”
Guiding principles
To build for everyone, we must build with everyone. Here’s our approach:
Product inclusion and equity can’t be condensed into a list of boxes to check. It involves evaluating the design against an understanding of users with unique needs, preferences, and challenges at various stages of the development process, and holding yourself and the product team accountable to appropriately address these needs. While all inflection points are important, being intentional about centering historically marginalized voices during ideation, UX research and design, user testing, and marketing is key to successful, inclusive outcomes.
We define “usability” as being inclusive of equity, including systemic, historical bias that can inadvertently be built into our products. Through the phases of product development, we ask questions related to the product itself, representation in our processes, availability across all intersections, and accessibility for people with disabilities.
While we continue our efforts to improve our internal representation, we recognize that Google has a long way to go to fully reflect all the users we serve. That’s why we are committed to holding ourselves accountable by investing in comprehensive testing, inclusive research and design, marketing best practices, and data frameworks.
Google employee’s quote
Florian Koenigsberger (he/him) Image Equity Lead, Google
Read the transcript (Opens in a Dialog Window)
“I do the work that I do because I’ve seen firsthand the differences when somebody feels seen by the tools that they use and doesn't. If I look through family photographs, I have with my grandmother, for example, who is a dark skinned Jamaican woman. We have baby pictures where I am seen because I have very light skin and she is not. And it shouldn't be the case that somebody has to look a certain way to feel a tool can work for them. Building tools that see people fairly, the power that comes from that is that people dream to be the biggest versions of themselves that they can imagine.”
More ways we’re building belonging in our products:
Explore more of our belonging work
Every Googler should feel seen, supported, connected, and empowered to participate fully.
Building belonging means protecting the privacy and security of all users around the world.
