Apple previews new accessibility features like Point and Speak, Live Speech, and more

Apple has introduced a bunch of new accessibility features to celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day on May 18. The new features aim to improve cognitive, vision and speech accessibility and are built with feedback from disabled communities. They will arrive on Mac, iPhone and iPad later this year.

One of the key features announced by Apple today is Personal Voice. It creates an automated sound just like the user rather than Siri. As per the tech giant, “For users at risk of losing their ability to speak — such as those with a recent diagnosis of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) or other conditions that can progressively impact speaking ability — Personal Voice is a simple and secure way to create a voice that sounds like them.”

To generate Personal Voice, users need to read along with a randomised set of text prompts to record 15 minutes of audio on iPhone or iPad. The feature will use machine learning to keep the information private and integrate it with Live Speech.

Notably, currently Personal Voice will only be available for English speakers, and can only be created on devices with Apple silicon chips.

Live Speech feature available on iPhone, Mac and iPad, allows users to type what they want to say and have it spoken out loud. This feature can be used during phone calls, FaceTime calls and in even in-person conversations.

The new Assistive Access is designed for users with cognitive disabilities. It streamlines the UI of the iPad and iPhone to focus on making it easier for you to chat, share photos and listen to music. In this, the Phone and FaceTime apps are merged into one.

Users have an option to customise the UI including icons, contrast, text labels and more as per their liking.

Apple’s new Point and Speak feature will help visually impaired users to interact with physical objects that have text labels with device’s camera and LiDAR scanner. Notably, this is the new feature in the existing Magnifier app. It already offers features like People Detection, Door Detection and Image Descriptions.

In addition to this, the Voice Control feature is enhanced with phonetic suggestions for text editing. This allows users who type with their voice to choose the right word out of many that sound the same like do, due and dew.

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