Apple has announced a series of new accessibility features, coming soon on the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Here are the main improvements:
- AssistiveTouch for Apple Watch, so you can control your watch with hand gestures.
- Eye tracking for iPad, so you can use the tablet with your eyes. operate. Later this year there will also be suitable MFi devices to control a mouse, for example. For example, by staring at a certain point for longer, you can press a button.
- VoiceOver gets a major upgrade and gives you more information about details in pictures, such as whether they contain people, texts and more. Also, VoiceOver can now describe a person's position in a photo.
- Support for bidirectional hearing aids and audiogram recognition. This works with MFi hearing aids, which will be available later this year. It gives people with hearing difficulties the ability to make hands-free calls and make FaceTime calls.
AssistiveTouch for watchOS
Control your Apple Watch with hand gestures? It will be possible later this year, without having to touch the screen. Apple indicates that this feature is especially useful for people with reduced mobility. These are, for example, people who do not have the fine motor skills to touch something on a screen, but are able to move their hand and wrist.
For this is a & ldquo; revolutionary & rdquo; devised a new accessibility function, Apple promises. AssistiveTouch uses the built-in motion sensors that are present in the watch, such as the gyroscope and the accelerometer. The optical heart rate monitor and machine learning also come into action to measure subtle movements. It looks at muscle movements and tendon activities to estimate how you move your hand. In this way it becomes possible to operate a cursor on the screen with a series of hand gestures, such as squeeze and clench your fist.
With the hand control you can record telephone calls, operate an arrow on the screen and access it. to Notification Center, Control Center, and more.
AssistiveTouch for Apple Watch will be available in a future software update, likely watchOS 8. Apple will present this new version on June 7 at WWDC 2021, along with iOS 15, macOS 12 and other updates. The aforementioned eye tracking for iPad will likely be part of iPadOS 15, which we will also be showcasing at WWDC.
Apple already has a lot of accessibility features, some of which are also interesting for people without disabilities:
- Accessibility: These are the iPhone features for people with disabilities
- Apple Watch and accessibility for people with disabilities
- Accessibility on Mac: These are the options for a visual impairment