Hidden iPhone helpers
ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES MAKE LIFE EASIER FOR DISABLED AND ABLE-BODIED USERS
DIf you have the skills to use technology you can be more included
id you know your phone could tell you when the washing machine beeps or when someone is standing too close to you at the shops? It can also play soothing sounds while you check your email, ask your smartwatch to respond to hand gestures, or tell your earbuds to work like hearing aids in crowded places.
These features are available in the Accessibility menu of Apple iPhones – often overlooked options that will be put under the spotlight today for Global Accessibility Awareness Day. And Apple plans to launch even more, including a feature to recognise doors and door handles for those with low vision, ways to control an Apple Watch on an iPhone screen, and Live Captions that can transcribe phone and video calls as they happen.
Apple accessibility policy and initiatives senior director Sarah Herrlinger says the company first added accessible options to its technology in 1985, before laws about digital inclusion, and the features have only become more important and advanced since that time.
“Our commitment to this work wasn’t based on a regulation or someone telling us that we had to do it but because there were people here who honestly believed that technology should work for everyone,” she says.
Herrlinger says more than one billion people worldwide have some form of disability, and many may not realise smartphone additions could make the technology work for them.
These features can also help users with modest hearing or vision challenges, she says.
A feature Apple introduced to iPhones and iPads called Voice Control, for example, can be used by blind people or those with low vision, but is also popular with “research scientists who might be up to their elbows in some sort of matter” and snowboarders who don’t “want to take off their gloves”.
Global Accessibility Awareness Day is “really a time to take a beat”, Herrlinger says, and think about how technology could work better for everyone.
To recognise the event, the company will introduce new features, like Door Detection and Live Captions for calls, as well as expanding others like Voice Control with new languages.
“We’re excited to introduce these new features, which combine innovation and creativity from teams across Apple to give users more options to use our products in ways that best suit their needs and lives,” she says.
Phia Damsma, based on the Gold Coast, knows the importance of features such as Voice Control when it comes to helping children of all abilities to access technology.
The developer says without accessibility features, some children would be excluded from opportunities and conversations.
Her company, Sonokids Australia, creates apps for children who are blind or have low vision; apps made to feel like games that encourage kids to get high scores but that teach them how to use smartphones.
“If you have the skills to use technology you can be more included and we take a lot of that for granted,” she says.
“A lot of people don’t realise how things are very easy to use if you don’t have a vision impairment, and how difficult they can be to access if you do.”
The company’s latest app, CosmoBally, is an audio-only adventure that helps children explore signification, or turning images into sound.
Damsma believes that with the right support “these students can do anything they want”.