As of February 12, Google’s Super Bowl commercial “Javier in Frame” had been watched over 36 million times on Youtube.
Directed by Adam Morse and narrated by Stevie Wonder (both of whom are visually impaired and/or blind) the Google Pixel Super Bowl commercial is showcasing the possibilities of its new Guided Frame technology.
The Google Pixel Super Bowl commercial
The commercial “Javier in Frame” follows the life of Javier, a man who is visually impaired. We see life through his eyes, which is blurry, but there are important memories he wants to capture. And his Google Pixel 8 helps him take selfies by giving him voice commands on where to hold his phone.
Google’s Guided Frame technology
The Google Pixel 8 series was just released a few months ago, but Google had been working for years on making their products more accessible for the disabled community.
It first started with the goal of providing a Live Caption feature. According to Google, Live Captions would help people that were hard of hearing to participate in phone calls by transcribing “spoken language on phone calls to people who are deaf or hard of hearing and reads aloud their written responses – in real time.”
When that feature became a success, Google turned its attention to help the visually impaired. According to Google’s Blog, they invited their Pixel’s Accessibility group in 2021 to give Google feedback on how they can help the visually impaired take selfies.
According to Lingeng Wang, a technical program manager at Google, “After we ran a preliminary study with three blind Googlers, we realized we need to provide real-time feedback while these users are actively taking selfies,” per Google.
In order to understand what it was like for a visually impaired user to take a selfie, Google had its employees try to take a selfie with their eyes closed (and you can imagine how the results came out) and realized that their visually impaired users needed more accessibility features.
Through much testing and feedback, Google was able to identify qualities their Guided Frame feature needed in order to be effective for their visually impaired users:
- The camera will automatically take a picture when a user’s face is centered, this way those who are visually impaired don’t have to worry about finding the shutter button.
- Voice instructions will help their users position their phones correctly for both single and group selfies.
The director behind the commercial
Adam Morse, director of “Javier in Frame,” lost his sight when he was 19 and, according to Forbes, is probably the first person with visual impairment to have directed a Super Bowl ad.
“Accessibility challenges that I’m faced with as a filmmaker with blindness are often already solved, you know, through technological innovation that exists today. And I’m really thankful for that,” Morse told Forbes.