To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Apple has announced a slew of new features iOS features designed to assist people living with disability.
Eye tracking support on iOS and iPadOS is arguably the most significant advancement, allowing users to control their devices with just their eyes. The tech uses a combination of the front-facing camera and on-device machine learning. Inputs such as tapping to open an app or swiping are all performed with by "dwell time", which seems to be the amount of time a user spends looking at them. Eye tracking will work across all existing apps, without the need for developers to explicitly support.
Other new accessibility features coming soon include "Music Haptics", motion sickness reduction tech, and new speech features.
When turned on, Music Haptics will enable millions of songs in the Apple Music catalogue to play taps, textures, and vibrations using the iPhone's taptic engine. This is predominantly designed for users who are deaf or hard of hearing. While this feature will initially be available in Apple Music, there will also be an API that will allow other developers to make use of this functionality.
Vehicle Motion Cues is a feature designed to reduce motion sickness when someone is using an iPhone or iPad in a car. It overlays animated dots over the device UI, which will then reflect changes in the motion of the vehicle. The theory is these reduce "sensory conflict". Users will be able to have this feature turn on automatically when their device detects they're in a car or bus. Alternatively, the action button on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will be able to toggle it on or off.
On the speech front, Apple's software will do a better job with atypical speech. Users will be able to turn on an explicit "Listen for Atypical Speech", which will look for a wider range of speech patterns. Users will also be able to create their own vocal shortcuts and assign custom utterances that Siri can understand to trigger tasks.
While Apple hasn't provided a time frame for these new accessibility features, precedent suggests they'll launch in iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. Apple is set to detail more about its latest operating systems next month, as part of its developer conference. Public betas should be available shortly after, ahead of a full release in September - usually timed alongside new iPhones.
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Alex Choros
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