Apple has made accessibility a priority for 40 years, with its first Office of Disability established in 1985. In anticipation of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Thursday, May 15, Apple announced new features which will arrive in the coming months.
Accessibility features for the Mac began in the 80s, with many more following, such as VoiceOver, the first gesture-based screen reader which came to the iPhone in 2009. Most recently, hearing health features saw AirPods Pro 2 enabled as a clinical grade hearing aid for adults with mild or moderate hearing loss.
The range of new features just announced is wide: here are some of the standouts. Some are of vital use to people with accessibility needs; many more are useful to everyone.
Magnifier For Mac
You’ll know Magnifier, it’s the digital magnifying glass app you can launch with a triple-press of the side button on your iPhone. It shows a camera view which you can enlarge, take photos of or use with the flashlight on. Personally, it’s my go-to for reading a menu in a modishly dark restaurant.
It can apply filters so items in the physical world are easier to see and can turn text into something more legible.
Coming this year is Magnifier for Mac. Once you’ve connected your iPhone camera (or other compatible camera) to the Mac, it can zoom in on surroundings, such as a whiteboard in a lecture theater, say. Users can adjust brightness, contrast and perspective to enhance the text and images. Such views can also be saved.
Accessibility Reader
This is another innovation which works alongside Magnifier, to take text from the physical world and turn it into a legible format in a custom font. It can also be used when you’re reading a website on your iPhone and you need bigger text, with different contrast and a clearer font (see the image at the top of this post).
Accessibility Nutrition Labels In The App Store
There are plenty of labels for apps but now there will be more, specifically designed to show what accessibility capabilities are in each app. These will tell users if the app has VoiceOver, Voice Control, Larger Text, Reduced Motion, captions and other features.
Apple Vision Pro Enhanced View
This looks amazing. I saw a demonstration of this and it showed a view through the Vision Pro which could magnify different elements. So, the user could zoom in on a recipe book sitting in a kitchen, for instance, then move across to a Vision Pro app floating in the air, showing a checklist of ingredients. The user can interact with the app before getting back to the cooking.
In short, the Vision Pro can magnify elements of what it sees, whether they are virtual or part of the physical surroundings.
Live Captions On Apple Watch
Live Listen is that highly useful feature where you can place your iPhone near a speaker when you’re just too far to hear well. This happens to me at dinner parties a lot, by the way. It relays the audio to AirPods or hearing aids, for instance. It also puts live captions on the iPhone display. But if you’re too far from the speaker to read these, those captions will appear on a paired Apple Watch.
There are lots more features coming, including Vehicle Motion Cues for Mac as well as the iPhone, new EQ settings for background sounds, and a hugely improved Personal Voice set-up, making it easier and quicker to record your voice now if you’re at risk of losing the ability to speak. And it will support Spanish as well as English and Mandarin Chinese.
So, when will the new features arrive? Apple says they will all arrive before the end of 2025.
