Arcadia, a platform that helps companies access aggregated energy data to build clean energy products, has raised $200 million.Read More
Arcadia, a platform that helps companies access aggregated energy data to build clean energy products, has raised $200 million.Read More
Three out of four people in the United States come to the internet first with questions about their health and wellness. The pandemic has exacerbated the need for high-quality, timely and actionable health information — in fact, since 2020, people are searching for “mental health hotline” twice as much as they did before. On Search, we work to connect people in crisis situations to reliable support as quickly as possible.Today, when you search for information about suicide prevention in the U.S., you’ll find a new, easy-to-remember hotline number and chat support at the top of your search results. We’ve updated this to reflect the new national mental health crisis hotline number, 988. Services are provided by the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, a network of more than 200 state and local call centers funded by the U.S. Department of Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).Suicide is a leading cause of death among people of all ages globally. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide is the second-leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 10-14 and 25-34 in the U.S. While Google has included suicide prevention information at the top of relevant search results for many years, this new hotline will make it easier for people in emotional distress and seeking mental health support to get help.With search interest in mental health resources reaching record highs this year, 988 provides a critical lifeline for those in need. “Hope has a new number, and it’s 988,” says Dr. John Draper, Executive Director of 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. “This is a historic moment in our country’s approach to mental health. When people call or text 988, they will be connected to trained counselors who will hear them, support them and connect them to resources. With this transition to 988, our hope is to reach so many more people in emotional crisis, and connect them to care.”For over a decade, we’ve worked closely with crisis support providers to help people navigate topics like suicide, substance use disorders and domestic violence. In addition to returning helpful information from reliable sources for related queries, we work with local suicide crisis partners to surface high-quality information around the world. Beyond the U.S., suicide hotlines are available in dozens of countries and we recently expanded the feature to Costa Rica, Pakistan and Belgium. We’ll continue working to bring this feature to even more countries.People come to Google looking for information in critical moments, and access to high-quality information is crucial to helping them navigate those moments safely. Providing hotline resources is one way we’re continuing to help people stay safe while they search.
I’m known in tech for Java development, software testing, and public speaking. So you may be wondering what brings me to Block‘s decentralized finance division as Vice President of Developer Relations. Oooh, I’m so glad you asked! Let me share some fun, little known facts…
The post Why I Joined Block appeared first on Angie Jones.
Editor’s note: Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and we’ll be sharing more on how we’re partnering with people with disabilitiesand what we’re doing to make education more accessible.The heart of our mission at Google is making the world’s information truly accessible. But the reality is we can only realize this mission with the help of the community. This year at I/O, we announced one more step in the right direction, thanks to feedback and help from our users: We’re making it easier for braille readers to use Android. Available in our next Android 13 Beta in a few weeks, we are beginning to build out-of-the-box support for braille displays in Talkback, our screen reader within Android.A refreshable braille display is an electro-mechanical device that creates braille patterns by raising rounded pins through holes in a flat surface. Braille-literate computer users use the braille display to touch-read braille dots representing text. With the display, you can also type out braille. These devices help people with deafblindness access mobile phones and people with blindness use their phones silently. Previously, people connected their Android devices to braille displays using the BrailleBack app, which required a separate download from the Play Store, or used a virtual keyboard within Talkback instead of a physical device.With this new update, there are no additional downloads necessary to use most braille displays. People can use braille displays to access many of the same features available with Talkback. For instance, you can use display buttons to navigate your screen and then do activities like compose an email, make a phone call, send a text message or read a book.There are also new shortcuts that make it easier to use braille displays with Talkback. Now there are shortcuts for navigating so it’s easier to scroll and move to the next character, word or line. There are also shortcuts for settings and for editing, like jumping to the end of documents or selecting, copying and pasting.You can sign up for the Android beta program to try out Talkback 13 in the next beta release.We are grateful to the community for their ongoing feedback that makes features like these possible. This is just the first step forward in developing this integration, and we can’t wait to do even more to expand the feature and to create even more related capabilities.
In this contributed article, Armen A. Avakian, MBA, Chief Business Development Officer (CBDO) of Hexact, Inc., discusses how SME’s and solopreneurs can collect and evaluate data that will help them operate more efficiently and boost lead generation. The solution is automation powered by artificial intelligence!