Thoughts On New Accessibility Features Coming To Apple by Dawn 

Thoughts On New Accessibility Features Coming To Apple


Anyone who knows me knows that three of my passions are advocacy, accessibility, and technology. Anyone who has sat with me at the various advocacy tables knows that accessibility is something that I fiercely advocate for. They also know how much I rely on my Apple devices, in my personal and professional life. In fact, my Iphone and Ipad are 2 of the devices I use to write my blogs. I use Apple products in my personal life too for things such as web browsing, and listening to and reading books for instance. With all of this in mind, I wanted to take some time to share my thoughts on a recent announcement that Apple shared about upcoming accessibility features on several of its prroducts.


To honor and observe Global Accessibility Awareness Day or GAAD. various tech companies, assistive tech companies, and other companies/businesses, agencies, disability and advocacy organizations, etc will do or announce different accessibility-related things, features, and so forth. Apple is no exception. In fact, Apple has made it a tradition over the last few years to make announcements about different upcoming accessibility-related features for its various products on Global Accessibility Awareness Day. This year was no different, with Apple giving us a sneak peek at some upcoming accessibiity features that will be released later this year. This year, Iphones and Ipads, Apple Watches, Macs, and the Apple Vision Pro, Apple's virtual reality headset, will all get some accessibility love. In turn, various segments of the disability population will get some accessibility love from Apple, including people that are visually impaired, deaf/hard-of-hearing individuals, individuals with mobility challenges, people with reading disabilities such as dyslexia, and individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities will also get some accessibility love from Apple.
This announcement was jam-packed with features and enhancements, including accessibility nutrition labels, updates to Apple's Live Caption feature, enhancements for people with mobility challenges, several enhancements for people with visual impairments, and more! If you'd like to read the full article talking about these accessibibility features on AppleVis, you can click the link below:



https://applevis.com/blog/apple-previews-new-accessibility-features-coming-later-year-accessibility-nutrition-labels



First, here is a short list of some of the features and updates:


• For deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, sound regogonition will gain the ability to recigonize when your name is being called.
• Accessibility Reader, which will improve the legibility of text by allowing for customization of fonts and spacing, and colors, and integration with the Magnifier app.
• The ability to control your Iphone and Ipad with head movements.
• Personal Voice will sound more natural, and the creation process will be faster.
• Accessibility nutrition labels in the App Store, which are similar to the privacy nutrition labels introduced in 2020.


Now, I want to take a deeper dive into some of these features, and, give my thoughts on them as well.



Accessibility Reader


This feature is a reading mode that seeks to improve the legibility of text, and will allow for the customization of colors, spacing and fonts. This feature will be available system-wide, on IOS. and Ipad-OS. Mac-OS. and Vision-OS. and, as a bonus, it will integrate with the Magnifier app, which will allow you to read text in your physical environment. This feature will be useful to people with vision impairments, and people with reading disabilities such as dyslexia.

As a totally blind person, I don't think this feature will be useful to me. Also, if I didn't explain this one well, I do appologize, because I'm looking at this from a blindness perspective. With that being said, I can see this being useful for things such as reading an electronic document that's in an unreadable font, or, maybe even having an easier time reading a package. While this feature may not fit my spicific use case, I'm sure there will be plenty of other individuals who will benefit from this.




Magnifier's Power Will Be... Well... Magnified


The magnifier app for Mac will allow you to use either your phone's camera, or another camera hooked up to your Mac to zoom in on your surroundings. If you have to attend or be a panelist on a Zoom meeting for instance, you can have multiple sessions going on at once, using your Mac's camera for the meeting, and also having the ability to read your presentation, or look at your notes on your phone.

While this feature wouldn't have any benefits for me as a blind person, I think that low-vision individuals will be making use of it. They surely will be able to find many scenarios, situations, etc where this would be useful, more than I could.




A Bird's Eye View Through Apple's Eyes


Apple's virtual reality headset, and its operating system will be getting some new accessibility enhancements as well. However, the most notable one, and the one that sticks out to me at least, is the new "Trusted Apps" API. or automatic programming interface that apps such as Be My Eyes will be able to take advantage of, and offer visual person-to-person interpretation.

This type of technology is still in its infanccy, and, so far, has not been made accessible to people with disabilities, especially the blind and low-vision community. These devices and their capabilities have not been really considered of much if any use to the disabled community. However, Apple is pushing the envelope, by offering a real-world example of how this can be used. I could think of several scenarios where this would be helpful beyond words. For instance, let's say that you need to go shopping, and, you are craving cereal, more spicfically, Honey Combs. From here, you could use a service such as Be My Eyes, on your headset, and all you'd need to do is turn your head from left to right. Apple has opened a door that has until now, remained locked and closed. I hope that other companies will also walk through that door, and start exploring the possibble and potential benefits of these devices for the disabled community.




"Are you talking to me?" 

One enhancement that the dead/hard-of-hearing community will get, is that sound recofonition, which is a feature that was introduced a couple years ago, that identifies certain sounds such as the smoke alarm, will now be able to detect when someone's calling your name. This will definitely help in crowded or noisey spaces, where it can be hard to isolate sounds.





Your Phone Can Read Your Mind... Sort Of


Your phone will be able to track your head movements, and, you will be able to control your Ipad or Iphone with head movements. This will be great for those with mobility impairments. I think one task this will prove useful is checking your email.
Sometimes, managing your email inbox can seem like a full-time job. According to Venngage, the averafe person receives 121 emails per day, and the number continues to rise! If you're an advocate, or, if you have and/or manage multiple accounts, this number can be even higher! If you have mobility challenges, when you check your email, you could nod your head to open and read the ones you need or are interested in, and shake your head to delete the rest. I'm going to be very honest, the more I think about this particular use-case, the more I smile!




   



Braille Notetakers In A New Form


One other notable feature is the Braille Access mode, which seeks to emulate a BrailleNote. In this mode, you will be able to take notes, do calculations using the Nemith Braille Code, and, most notably, read documents in Braille Ready Format, or BRF.
For context, a BrailleNote is like a laptop, the chief difference is that it has braille on it instead of print.

I'm chomping at the bit to get my hands on this for two reasons. First, I got my first BrailleNote when I was 7 years old, and in second grade, and, I used them in my school and home lives. I browsed the web, sent and received emails, read books, and did homework, and so much more. Braille was and still is a crucial part of my life, and, it was an equally important part of my education. Sadly, my BrailleNose was taken away from me 2 weeks before my high school graduation, and, my quality of life suffered. To add to this, these devices are between 8-9 grand. This means that these procucts are unaffordable for people and families like me and mine. I think that if this mode was available at that time, things would have been a little better.
While I have a Brailliant BI. 40X now, sometimes I still miss my BrailleNote, especially for notetaking.
Another reason I can't wait to sink my teeth into this feature, is to see how it does with reading files in Braille Ready Format, or BRF. because, I had a recent experience that was not pleasant. A family member ordered me some braille ebooks in BRF. format, and, I was reading one very recently on my Brailliant. Unfortunately, the book cut off midway through, and in the midst of a sentence! Right now, the only way to read BRF. files on the Iphone or Ipad, is to use the bard. Mobile app from the National Library Service For The Blind And Print Disabled. The problem with that, is that the app does not backtranslate. That means that if you're reading a file that's in BRF. format, then, you have to switch your braille input and output tables to eight-dot braille. This can be problematic for a lot of reasons, the main one being that it changes how your braille display works, very drastically, including your ability to type.




Not All Apples Are Good For You Or Your Device


The last feature I'm going to cover here is the introduction for Accessibility Nutrition Labels for the App Store. In 2020, Apple introduced privacy nutrition labels to the App Store. These labels are submitted by the app developers, and gave information such as what data the developer and the app collect and why. The accessibility nutrition labels are similar to this.
These labels will be submitted by the app developer, and have information about what accessibility features are supported by and tested for their apps. These labels will be voluntary at first, to give developers ample time to evaluate their app's accessibility, and will become a requirement in the future.


For a long time, this is something that a lot of people have said is much-needed. I did and still do agree with them. However, there were challenges and different factors that always had to be considered, that made the logistics of this tricky. First, everybody's access needs are different. For instance, I need to be able to use an app with my screenreader, whereas someone else may need magnicfication software, or they need to use switch control to operate their devices, and use apps. So, if an app works with switch control, but, doesn't work with Voiceover, then, it's inaccessible.
Another tricky part of this, is that some developer's definitions of accessibility are very different, and contrast or conflict with what a user's definition of accessibility is. For instance, some companies and developers will make a mixture of large text, and dyslexic font and maybe some basic magnification, and sprinkle it over their app(s) and call it done. To me, that's just doing enough to make it look good, and definitely not what accessibility is!
There's also developers who either don't know about accessibility, or how to make their app accessible, or, they think that something's accessible when it isn't, and others who may want to make their apps accessible, but, have no idea where to start. For these types of situations, education, understanding, patience, grace, and advocacy, among other things can go a long way.
Of course, sadly, there are some developers who don't care, and have no entention of caring. In that case, all we can do is keep advocating, and do our best to find alternative solutions.

However, I think that this will be a good thing, because, it will get the conversation started, and, open the door for developers to learn about app accessibilility, and maybe even engage with and learn from their users. This will benefit everyone because, the developer will be open to new markets, that means more money in their pocket, more downloads, and people will be talking about and recommending their app. They will also be helping to build a more inclusive and accessible world for people with disabilities, and who knows, they could even become allies!

I think this will benefit users as well for several reasons. First, it will help us make more informed decisions about where and how we spend our money. For me, I've always used caution when purchasing apps, or subscriptions to services, both because of limited resources, and because getting a refund is not guaranteed, and hard to get. A lot of times, I have tried looking for demos and walkthroughs of apps. This way, I could make sure it was going to be accessible before pulling out my wallet. However, demos are not always available, or, if they are, they're done through a sighted users lens. The only other options that I and other users had, was to ask if an app was accessible on forums, email listservs, and Facebook groups. That was and still is a crap shoot, because, there's no guaransee that in those places have used or even heard of that app.
Another reason I think that this is a much-needed and welcome improvement, is that this could add to or compliment something similar to this. AppleVis, which is a site for blind and low-vision users of Apple products has an app directory section on their page. This directory contains apps for IOS. devices, Macs, Apple Watches, and Apple TV. and, each directory can be sorted/browsed through by app name, category, device, and latest entries. Each app has several sections dedicated to accessibility. There's a place to say how accessible the app is, say how clearly voiceover reads page elements, button labeling, and a space to leave accessibility comments. Every time I hear about a new app, or I'm thinking about downloading or purchasing an app, the first place I go to is AppleVis. I'll admit, that I try to visit AppleVis to see what new apps have been submitted to the IOS. app directory. To my knowledge, this is the only thing I've found that's similar to the accessibility nutrition labels. They will be a great help to me, and if an app isn't listed in the AppreVis directory, I'll still be able to have some sense of how accessibile an app is.



Final Thoughts

At the time of this writing, there's no information about availablility, and spicfic dates/timeframes on when feasures will be released, or which devices they will be available on. I hope that at least some of these features, especially the Braille Access Mode will be available on recent but older devices. I want to hear from all of you. What feature are you looking forward to the most? How do you think it will be useful to you? What is your favorite, or do you have more than one? What feature are you hoping Apple will implement at some point? Whas do you think of these features in general?
Which feature (or features) do you think are my favorite? Hint: one of them has to do with braille.