Vision Pro will soon be able to show live captions of everything being spoken around you

Today in advance of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Apple outlined a variety of exciting new accessibility updates coming to its platforms later this year. From bringing the Vision Pro’s eye tracking tech to the iPad and iPhone, to music haptics, and more.

One new accessibility feature coming to Vision Pro users is Live Captions. Built especially for the deaf or hard of hearing, Live Captions will—as the name implies—take everything being spoken around you and present it in written form, all in real-time.

Spoken words turned automatically into text

One of the most transformative features of augmented reality is the way it can enhance the real world rather than taking you out of it. For some, this might mean displaying useful widgets around your physical space, or a virtualized Mac display.

While these features are great for productivity, Live Captions is set to be a game changer for basic human interactions, particularly for the deaf or hard of hearing.

Apple writes:

visionOS will include systemwide Live Captions to help everyone — including users who are deaf or hard of hearing — follow along with spoken dialogue in live conversations and in audio from apps. With Live Captions for FaceTime in visionOS, more users can easily enjoy the unique experience of connecting and collaborating using their Persona. Apple Vision Pro will add the capability to move captions using the window bar during Apple Immersive Video, as well as support for additional Made for iPhone hearing devices and cochlear hearing processors.

Live Captions are only one of the new accessibility features coming to visionOS. Apple also announced new vision-related enhancements like the following:

• Reduce Transparency
• Smart Invert
• Dim Flashing Lights

Users with low vision or sensitivity to brightness will be able to have Vision Pro modify what they’re seeing to better suit their eyesight. How futuristic is that?

9to5Mac’s Take

Live Captions is the kind of transformative feature that gets me very excited about the Vision Pro’s potential. Sure, wearing a headset any time you have a conversation with someone may not be the ideal scenario. But especially over time as future Vision devices get smaller and more comfortable, the ability for the deaf or hard of hearing to have all verbal dialogue transcribed instantly for them is incredible. I can only imagine future implications for eliminating other communication gaps, such as a future live translation feature.