Apple has revealed that it has been working to improve the cognitive, auditory and visual accessibility of its products and has unveiled new features that should help people with disabilities. The first of these is Live Speech, which allows non-speaking people to type instead of speaking during calls.
Personal Voice will create a computer voice pattern, while Detection Mode is for people who are blind or have low vision.
The features will arrive later this year, Apple has revealed without providing a detailed schedule. We expect them to come to iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, as well as some apps on next-gen macOS. All interfaces are likely to be introduced at WWDC next month.
Apple accessibility features
Assisted access can be turned on or off through Settings. It includes a customized experience for Phone and FaceTime, which is unified into a Calls app with big, bright shortcuts for contacts. Messages has a large emoji keyboard, while the gallery enlarges the thumbnails to make it easier to preview photos. It can be applied to both iPadOS and iOS.
Live Speech will allow you to save commonly used phrases to quickly jump into conversations. Personal Voice will offer a series of text instructions for one person to read and record 15 minutes of audio. This would allow the model to be trained, so when the user starts to wane in vocal ability, he or she can still communicate with loved ones.
Apple accessibility features
Tracking mode will interact with objects that have text labels and read them aloud when pointed at. It will be integrated into the Magnifier app and will also offer people detection, door detection, and image descriptions.
Once the features are available, customers who are deaf or hard of hearing will be able to use their Made for iPhone hearing aids directly on a Mac. Users sensitive to images and fast animations will be able to pause gifs in Messages and Safari. Another interesting feature is the adaptation of the speed with which Siri speaks, with options ranging from 0.8x to 2x.
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