Checking the existence of a file in Angular 6

I am developing an Angular6 web-application in which user selects an Excel file and import it into a web grid. Excel has a file column. I need to validate, the file exists on user's machine. I have written the following function.

import { HttpClient } from '@angular/common/http';
import { Observable, throwError, of } from 'rxjs';
import { catchError, tap, map } from 'rxjs/operators';

  fileExists(path: string): Observable<boolean> {
    return this.http.head(path).pipe(
      map(response => {
        return true;
      }),
      catchError(error => {
        return of(false);
      })
    );
  }

This http HEAD call is always being blocked by the browser, I have also tried with http GET but didn't work. I am getting the following error on Chrome 84.

Not allowed to load local resource: file///C:Users/username/file.txt