Today, 18th of May, is the Global Accessibility Awareness Day. To celebrate that, Apple shared a press release announcing several changes to accessibility features. While Apple can be rightfully criticized for their questionable business practices and hermetic ecosystem locking users down, they are undeniably a pioneer when it comes to accessibility. A lot of people with disabilities feel like they can't buy any other phones than iPhones due to reliability when it comes to supporting the accessibility features. If Apple introduces something in the software, it generally just works, and if it doesn't, then a timely fix is provided. I wish I could say the same about, for example, Samsung and the broken hearing aid streaming that's been dealing with critical bugs for around a year now.
The changes announced by Apple are for example choices regarding the visualisation of menu items, to better fit the user's vision needs, optional clear display of navigational interface for easing cognitive load (or perhaps motor issues as well! some gestures may be tricky to do if hands have some issues), improvements in captioning and text-to-speech, as well as readers for low-vision users.
The big news is that a lot of the new and existing features will be available on all M2 Mac computers and some M1 ones as well. Especially exciting part is that, until now, no computers supported streaming to hearing devices. While the M1/2 computers utilize similar chips as the phones, it is still a step forward. I really hope that this will put pressure on the developers to make such a feature common place. I know some Mac users with hearing loss who are really excited about this change and looking forward to upgrading their old Macs in order to use the feature.
Apple is also going to celebrate by launching sign language support with the customer service in additional countries (Germany, Italy, Spain, and South Korea) expanding from the existing support in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Australia, and Japan.
Some Apple Stores will have accessibility-related sessions to explain the available features to customers, on Apple Podcasts there will be hosted talks related to the topic of accessibility and Apple TV will promote movies and series curated by communities with disabilities.
@Saka Thank you for sharing! It is good news indeed that Apple is making all these changes to make devices (and games!) more accessible. And it is doubly inspiring that changes and developments in accessibility do not end with Apple, there are many more good initiatives out there.
@Saka great news, thank you.
As we all know, Apple is the leader in all what it does, if Apple does it everyone will, and I admit that if everyone follows Apple about accessibility matters, and why not, get things further, that will be great for users even if they're a minority we can't know when we'll need it
Tag me to be sure I see the answer and reply to you / Taguez moi pour être sûr que je vois la réponse et vous réponde en retour
Most of my writings in no particular order (mostly in French) / La plupart de mes écrits sans ordre particulier >> HERE/ ICI <<
I've stumbled upon this video talking about how Apple's products provide accessibility for someone with hearing loss. It's from 2016, so a lot of things have changed/improved since, but the ones she described still exist. A lot of people I know really like FaceTime.
I must say, I use Android and I use a smartwatch for notifications as well. I rarely can hear or notice my phone and getting the vibration + message on my wrist helps a lot.
Unamused Snarktooth. Advocate for hearing loss & accessibility. Person, friend and a terrible/terrific* artist.
*delete as appropriate
@Saka Those features she describes are useful, though I must confess, I never owned a smartphone in my life (touchscreens and I do not work together), so it is hard for me to fully understand and appreciate those features.
And in the mobile phone that I do have, I never have a ringing sound, only the vibration. I do not like sudden noises, so I feel calmer this way, and the inability to choose the melody you like (the phone is so basic it only has a few factory options) is an impact as well.
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DoctorEldritch
