As distance learning took hold with the Covid-19 craze, Chromebooks became a must-have device for students. Fortunately, Google's affordable laptops are about to become even more useful.

In a blog post, Andy Russell, product manager for Chromebooks, revealed that Chromebooks will come with a number of new features and accessibility improvements this year. However, none of them seem to be as important as screen recording.

Russell writes "Teachers have long recorded classes to help students do homework and study for tests, but over the past year, it has become just as essential to virtual learning, which is why the latest Chromebook update in March incorporated screen recording tools into Chrome OS. That's why.

In other words, just like macOS, there will be an on-screen button that toggles between a menu of keyboard shortcuts or screenshot buttons; a closer look at the animation shared by Google (see below) shows that this menu opens a screenshot of a portion of the screen and selects a window. Open a screenshot and select a window.

Russell's blog post explains that 40 new Chromebooks will be available in 2021 and describes other new features. Regarding accessibility, the ChromeVox screen reader tutorial will be improved and the ability to search menus will be added. It will also add "voice switching, which automatically changes the screen reader's audio based on the language of the text."