Apple has shared details on new & changed accessibility features coming to
macOS Catalina, iOS 13, & iPadOS this Fall.
Voice Control
During its keynote presentation Apple showcased a new Voice Control
accessibility feature that allows users to fully control Mac, iPadOS, & iOS
devices entirely with your voice.
Voice Control will reportedly improve on the existing Enhanced Dictation
feature by using the Siri speech recognition engine, so you get the latest
advances in machine learning for audio-to-text transcription.
Although Apple included a very impressive demonstration of Voice Control
during the keynote, the additional information now made available offers a
more complete preview of the feature's capabilities and limitations:
Add custom words: Whether you're writing a biology report, filling out a
legal document, or emailing about a favorite topic, you can add custom words
to ensure that Voice Control recognizes the words you commonly use.
Rich text editing: Thanks to rich text editing commands, you don't have to
rehearse before you speak. Making corrections is quick and easy. You can
replace phrases by name. Try saying "Replace I'm almost there with I just
arrived." Fine-grained selection also makes it simple to select text. Try
saying "Move up two lines. Select previous word. Capitalize that."
Word and emoji suggestions: If you need to correct a word, there's a new
interface just for that. Simply ask to correct a word, and you'll be
presented with a list of suggested replacements.
Seamless transitions from dictation to commands: Voice Control understands
contextual cues, so you can seamlessly transition between text dictation and
commands. For example, say "Happy Birthday. Tap send." in Messages, and
Voice Control sends "Happy Birthday" - just as you intended. You can also
say "delete that", and Voice Controls knows to delete what you just typed.
Comprehensive app navigation: You can rely entirely on your voice to
navigate an app. Comprehensive navigation is provided by navigation
commands, names of accessibility labels, numbers, and grids.
On iOS devices and iPadOS, Voice Control will allow you to use your voice to
perform gestures, such as tap, swipe, pinch, zoom, press the Home button,
and more.
Additionally, you can record multistep gestures for apps on iPadOS or your
iOS device. Apple gives the example that if you love to send messages with
fireworks, you can record the gestures to do this and use the recording to
quickly send messages with fireworks.
If you have an iPad or iPhone that supports Face ID, Voice Control will make
use of the Attention Awareness capabilities to go to sleep when you turn
your head away from the TrueDepth camera. It doesn't activate until you look
back at the screen - so you can talk to a friend nearby without triggering
Voice Control on your device.
All audio processing for Voice Control will take place on your device,
ensuring that your personal data is kept private.
New Features & Changes for VoiceOver Users
VoiceOver improvements also feature in what's coming in macOS Catalina, iOS
13, & iPadOS.
Top of the list for many in our community might be the news that Siri is
getting a new voice.
Neural Text to Speech is a new voice that's entirely generated by software
with a more natural cadence. In the on stage demonstration of the new voice,
Siri sounded much more natural, especially with longer sentences.
Apple states that with macOS Catalina, VoiceOver users will enjoy simplified
keyboard navigation that requires less drilling into unique focus groups.
The Tab key now more simply advances through selection of elements - such as
window stoplights, toolbar buttons, and scroll bars.
VoiceOver users with multiple Apple devices will be pleased to learn that
any customized preferences for how punctuation marks are spoken will now be
stored in iCloud, giving you a consistent experience across macOS, iPadOS, &
iOS.
For blind developers, VoiceOver now reads aloud warnings, line numbers, and
break points in the text editor of the upcoming Xcode 11.
Additional International Braille Tables
macOS Catalina adds more international braille tables and lets you quickly
switch between them.
Apple only mentions this enhancement on its macOS Catalina preview page, so
we do not know at this point if iPadOS & iOS 13 will be gaining braille
improvements. Considering that braille support has appeared a lower priority
than VoiceOver in recent iOS releases, we certainly hope that it will be
receiving some much needed attention on iPadOS & iOS 13.
Improvements for Low Vision Users
Low vision users will be gaining some enhancements on macOS Catalina:
Hover Text displays high-resolution zoom of text, text fields, menu items,
buttons, and more in a dedicated window. Just press the Control key when
hovering over text with your cursor, and a window with zoomed text appears
alongside the standard interface - helping you stay contextually aware. Text
is crisply displayed in a font and color of your choice. And you can
interact with buttons and type right in the zoomed window.
While using a second display, you can see the same screen up close and at a
distance simultaneously. You can keep one monitor zoomed in and another at a
standard resolution. Or keep a personal Mac zoomed in while giving a
presentation.
Users with color vision deficiencies can adjust display colors using new
color filter options. Your Mac shifts the colors onscreen, helping you
easily differentiate areas of confusion. And you can turn this preference on
and off through the Accessibility Options pane using Command-Option-F5.
A new display option lets you tint your entire screen using a color of your
choice. Some users may find that certain color tints help make text easier
to read.
In Closing
It's possible that this Fall's software releases will include additional
accessibility enhancements which Apple has chosen not to preview yet. We
also hope that it will bring fixes for the outstanding bugs & issues present
on all platforms.
Resources
* Apple's full list of what's new in iOS 13
<https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-13-preview/features/>
* Apple's full list of what's new in macOS Catalina
<https://www.apple.com/macos/catalina-preview/features/>
* Apple's full list of what's new in iPadOS
<https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-preview/features/>
At this time, Apple has said nothing about any accessibility enhancements
coming to either watchOS 6 or tvOS 13.
Submitted by AppleVis at:
www.applevis.com
