Apple is celebrating Accessibility Awareness Day this entire week with new content for Apple lovers of varying abilities. There’s a lot to check out this week from Fitness+, Apple Maps, Apple Music, and more.
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In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Apple is previewing a number of new accessibility features coming to iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac later this year. The company says that these new features will bring additional ways for users with disabilities to “navigate, connect, and get the most out of Apple products.”
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Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered his commencement speech today in Washington, DC, at Gallaudet University. Gallaudet is a university for the deaf and hard of hearing and partners with Apple to create inclusive products.
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Twitter accessibility improved today for people who are blind or have limited vision. The company is globally rolling out improvements to its image descriptions, after testing them for a month …
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Colin Hughes, a quadriplegic Apple user who often shares his experience of accessibility features on Apple devices, has reported that Apple has quietly added a valuable new Mac Voice Control feature.
Although it isn’t shown in the release notes, it appears to have been added in macOS Monterey 12.3 …
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A summary of the way that various tech giants last year sought to address the needs of people with disabilities shows that Apple’s accessibility record is better than that of most companies – but did make things worse in one respect.
The piece summarizes the accessibility wins and losses of Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Twitter …
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If there’s anyone who should know about how to get the most accurate Mac speech recognition, it’s someone who’s an ex-BBC producer and also quadriplegic – so he’s heavily reliant on dictation.
Colin Hughes, who has previously shared his thoughts on Apple’s accessibility features, says that using the right microphone can transform the experience of dictating on a Mac or PC. He’s been helping one manufacturer get it right and says that the result is the best mic he’s ever found for speech recognition.
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One of the new iPadOS 15 accessibility features is support for eye-tracking devices, which allows people with disabilities involving little or no upper body movement to control an iPad with their eyes.
This has taken years of work, and the result isn’t cheap – though it may be covered by medical insurance …
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A pair of senior Apple machine learning and artificial intelligence executives are set to speak at Sight Tech Global next month. The focus will be on accessibility, with Apple’s leaders explaining how the company “see[s] the future unfolding, especially around new experiences that will help people with vision loss.”
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Quadriplegic Apple user and disability campaigner Colin Hughes last year shared his experiences of using Apple kit as someone who uses a wheelchair and has only very limited use of his hands. He’s now followed up with a look at the accessibility improvements Apple made in iOS 15 and watchOS 8.
He highlights the progress Apple has made, as well as the weaknesses in its accessibility support, including a couple of very surprising failings…
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There have long been reports that Apple is working on ways to effectively create AirPods hearing aids – adding capabilities to the in-ear headphones that would enable them to replace hearing aids for at least some people. Or, at least, blur the lines between earphones and hearing aids.
A new report today says that the Cupertino company is still actively working on this, and has other health-related ambitions for the devices …
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Update: Automated tools like UserWay are highly controversial among disabled web users.
Susan Bennett revealed back in 2013 that she only found out by chance that she had become the original voice of Siri. She’s now taking advantage of her accidental fame to promote a new approach to web usability.
Bennett stars in an amusing Siri-based ad for an AI-based approach to making websites accessible to people with disabilities, such as those using screen readers …
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It’s more than a year since Twitter launched voice tweets, offering users the option of tweeting a spoken message of up to 140 seconds in length. The company has now addressed accessibility concerns by offering captions for voice tweets …
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During WWDC 2021, Apple previewed iOS 15. As the company unveiled many features for the general public, Apple is also always working to make its products accessible to more and more people. Here’s everything new with Accessibility on iOS 15.
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Apple previewed some exciting new accessibility features yesterday and today, it is celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) across many of its platforms like the App Store, Shortcuts app, TV app, Maps, Fitness+, Today at Apple sessions in its stores, and more.
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Apple today announced a new accessibility service called SignTime coming to Apple Store and Apple Support customers. The service will connect people with AppleCare and Retail Customer Care teams using sign language. SignTime launches May 20.
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Along with a host of new accessibility features announced today, iOS is set to gain a new Background Sounds feature to help reduce distractions and promote focus, calm, and rest.
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Apple has announced a variety of new software features coming soon to iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. All of these features focus on Accessibility, including AssistiveTouch for Apple Watch, eye-tracking support for iPad, and much more.
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Spotify has announced three new accessibility updates heading to iOS and Android over the coming weeks. The most interesting may be a new auto transcription feature for podcasts so users can read their shows.
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The UK’s Financial Ombudsman has opened an investigation into whether Apple discriminates against severely disabled customers through its iPhone Upgrade Program conditions.
The complaint was filed by Colin Hughes, a quadriplegic Apple user who says he is unable to comply with Apple UK’s requirement to visit a store in person in order to join or renew …
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We’ll soon start seeing a lot more TikTok video captions. The company has announced that it is now offering an accessibility tool to creators that will automatically add text captions after a video has been uploaded or recorded …
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Automatic live captions of videos, podcasts, and phone calls was a headline feature of Google’s Pixel smartphones last year, but thanks to a new Chrome update, the same accessibility option is now available on Macs.
Simply update to the stable version of Chrome 89, and you can simply toggle on the feature, which turns speech into text in a privacy-protecting way …
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The Aira app for blind and partially sighted people normally costs anywhere from $29 to $199 per month, but free Aira app usage is now available inside Starbucks stores across the US…
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Apple just gave an overhaul to its accessibility landing page to better highlight the native features in macOS and iOS that allow user’s devices to “work the way you do” and encourage everyone to “make something wonderful.” Now a new interview with Apple’s accessibility and AI/ML engineers goes into more detail on the company’s approach to improving accessibility with iOS 14.
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