INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Steven Aquino
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Steven Aquino is a freelance tech writer and
iOS accessibility expert.
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AirPods to get Live Listen feature in iOS 12
For Apple, this year
Global Accessibility Awareness Day is all about education
Accessibility has long played an integral role at Apple Worldwide
Developers Conference, and it certainly had its presence felt in 2018
There are some constant elements of the week, such as the labs, sessions, and mid-week social that brings together members of Apple
Accessibility group, developers and others interested in the disabled community to celebrate inclusiveness and accessible design.
This year
After attending the keynote and speaking with numerous people at Apple during the week, one feeling that has resonated with me is that
accessibility, conceptually, has become a mandatory part of not only how Apple designs its products, but of the Apple ecosystem at large
To be mindful of accessibility is now, more than ever, an expectation.
Several student scholarship winners I spoke to eagerly expressed
their desire to learn more about what accessibility is, how it works and how to best incorporate it into their apps
They truly want to build tools for everyone.
The announcements made this year were less about discrete features for accessibility sake and
more about how the new features, as Apple designed them, are inherently accessible
The Apple Design Awards, for instance, has included an accessibility category the last few years, but not so this year
In fact, accessibility has always been part of the criteria for selecting winners, and Apple says this year winners have support for
Calzy, a calculator app from indie developer Raja Vijayaraman, supports Dynamic Type.
Accessible announcements
As a disabled reporter who
has covered the last several Apple media events, I&ve attended enough now that I&ve come to realize there is an interesting (to me)
accessibility angle to how the company structures its events and how it supports attendees with disabilities
That is another story for another time, but I found myself thinking about it duringMonday keynote address.
I&ve been to several Apple
These slides are the most visually accessible I&ve ever seen.
— Steven Aquino (@steven_aquino) June 4, 2018
The slides Apple showed were
the most readable I&ve seen yet.As someone who has low vision, this is critically important
The white, bold San Francisco typeface set against the black background made for such high contrast that I had no problems seeing every
slide — even the word-cloud ones listing ancillary features
This made my job covering the news easier, because I wasn&t straining my eyes in order to get important
information.
Accessibility-wise,Monday&skeynote slides were infinitely more visually friendly than the ones used at the March event in
As pretty and appropriately themed as they were, I found those slides difficult to see; I liked WWDC much better.
The lesson here is in how
pervasive and dynamic accessibility can be
Accessibility is everywhere, and the relevance in this case is that it extends way beyond any new software features.
Accessibility for
everyone
There are a handful of new mainstream features across Apple platforms that the company feels has great potential in an
This epitomizes the idea of accessibility for everyone—software not built expressly for accessibility, but designed in such a way that
users of all abilities can benefit.
One such feature is Group FaceTime in iOS 12
Apple famously included deaf users in an iPhone 4 commercial many moons ago, and FaceTime has remained a popular method of communication for
many users in the deaf community.
Whereas previously the feature was essentially a one-on-one conversation, the arrival of iOS 12 this fall
will make it possible to converse with up to 32(!) people at once
For the deaf and hard-of-hearing, the ability to include one entire family (or friends or co-workers) should make FaceTime an even more
compelling technology for deaf users.
Another example is the Walkie-Talkie mode in watchOS 5
I&ve seen chatter on Twitter that it seems like a frivolous addition, but in actuality it can be practical.
Imagine you&re someone who a
caregiver for a person with severe physical impairments (or simply elderly) and both of you have an Apple Watch
With Walkie-Talkie, you can &radio& each other from separate locations in a home or care facility right from your wrists
No need to iMessage or make a phone call or ring a bedside call button
All you need is your Apple Watch and the Walkie-Talkie mode.
Lastly, Siri Shortcuts
While Apple marketing materials are pitching Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12 as a time-saving, convenient way to get things done, there also are
key accessibility ramifications as well.
The ability to, for instance, order coffee at Starbucks or Philz without needing to remember to do
it—or, crucially, how to do it in an app—can be streamlined with Siri Shortcuts
This has major implications for alleviating cognitive load and stress (in addition to being a time-saver), and has enormous potential to
positively impact executive functionfor users who have certain cognitive delays.
But it more than just cognition; the automation that Siri
Shortcuts provides can also benefit those with limited fine-motor skills, who may struggle with the rigor of multiple taps and swipes.
In
addition to the features above, there is a host of others whose accessibility promise excites Apple
The new dark mode in macOS Mojave, for example, boosts contrast considerably, which should help Mac users see better and guard against eye
fatigue or screen glare.
AirPods with Live Listen
There was one notable hardware-specific feature not announced during the keynote
As Ireported this week, Live Listen — a feature previously only available to compatible Made for iPhone hearing aids — is coming to
AirPods with the release of iOS 12.
The addition of Live Listen is noteworthy because it will allow someone with limited hearing to better
hear speakers in noisy environments or from across a room
This functionality isn&t meant as a full replacement for a professional-grade hearing aid, but it certainly is a huge deal for the
hard-of-hearing who want to use AirPods
Now they can use Live Listen to hear better without having to spend additional money on dedicated hardware.
Apple says Live Listen is
included in the first developer beta of iOS 12, so anyone curious about it can test it out now.
Miscellany
Unlike past years, there aren&t
any all-new discrete accessibility features across Apple platforms this year
This follows with the theme that accessibility is interwoven into the banner features Apple is promoting in their marketing
copy.
Nonetheless, there is a smattering of enhancements across Apple platforms that are worth mentioning
Notable ones include the ability to use the Siri voice on iOS as the voice for Speak Selection, where you highlight a body of text and have
The Siri voice is now set as the default.
Another enhancement, pertaining to the Smart Annotations feature announced for iWork in March, is
OCR support for handwritten notes, which will read them aloud
Blind and low vision users can now hear text markup in documents if they can&t see it.
Finally, the Touch Bar
VoiceOver users with Touch Bar MacBook Pros now have the ability to create custom automator scripts right from the Touch Bar with VoiceOver
turned on.
The work Apple has put into making accessibility a focal point of the conference the last few years is bearing serious fruit this
Developers heard the message.
