To coincide with Global Accessibility Awareness Day tomorrow, Apple has announced a slew of new accessibility features for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. The three biggest new features include door detection, live captions, and screen mirroring for Apple Watch.
Door detection is part of Apple's Magnifier app. The app lets users zoom into physical objects around them - such as small fonts on nutrition labels - but can also detect how far other people are from them. Door detection augments this by providing users information about the doors around them. For example, it might tell you the door is three metres away, closed, and the name of the business. The app can also recognise symbols like restroom icons and read trading hours. Users can customise what attributes they want the app to read out.
This functionality will work on any iPhone or iPad with a LiDAR sensor, limiting it to more recent models. The iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max, the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, and the iPad Pro models from mid-2020 and up.
Live captions are coming to iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and will be able to provide transcriptions of any audio content, whether it's a phone call, voice message, or FaceTime. This will work with any audio - not just within Apple's own apps. In FaceTime group calls, live captions will be attributed to who said what in a chat-like system to make it easier to keep track of who said what. Live captions will initially be available to users in the US and Canada.
Apple Watch users will soon be able to mirror their screen to their iPhone, allowing them to control it more easily via iPhone assistive features such as Voice Control and Switch Control. In addition, Apple is expanding what hand gestures can be used for. A double-pinch gesture will now let users end or answer a phone call, dismiss a notification, take a photo, and control their media.
Apple also previewed a few other features. These include:
- Buddy Controller: A feature that lets two gaming controllers act as one, so a user can ask a friend or care provider to help them play
- Greater customisation in the Books app: users can change line, character, and word spacing for a better experience
- Siri Pause Time: Users can change how long Siri waits before responding to a request
- Voice Control Spelling: Users can dictate custom spellings, going letter-by-letter
Apple said these features will be available later this year, but hasn't confirmed specific timing.
Alex Choros
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