Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day — perfect timing for Apple to announce new features that should make iPhones and iPads more accessible for people with disabilities.
The new features include vocal shortcuts for easier hands-free control, and music haptics that will allow you to experience songs through taps, textures, and vibrations. And there’s eye-tracking that will allow users to navigate their devices without additional hardware or accessories. Under the hood, this leverages AI to understand what the user is looking at and which gesture they want to perform, such as swiping and tapping.
There are also some interesting upgrades for users in cars, such as a Vehicle Motion Cues to help with motion sickness, where you’ll see animated dots on the edge of the screen that move with the motion of the car. And CarPlay is getting voice control, there will be larger-bolder text for colorblind users, and notifications for deaf or hard of hearing users when there’s a sound like a car horn or siren.
If some of this news sounds familiar, it’s because tech companies have been making accessibility announcements all week, including at Google’s I/O conference and OpenAI’s big press event. For example, Google says its Gemini technology will be able to describe images for blind people , and OpenAI says its latest model can even describe the environment around someone.
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