What's New in iOS 18 for Accessibility

In this episode, Thomas Domville gives us an overview of new accessibility features for blind, DeafBlind, and visually impaired users in iOS 18. Topics covered include:

• Live Recognition Comes to the Rotor
• Voices Rotor
• Improvements to Audio Ducking
• VoiceOver Tutorial
• VoiceOver Startup Haptic Feedback
• Delay Before Selection
• New languages for Lithuanian and Kazak
• Using Personal Voice with VoiceOver
• Equalizer and Other New Customization Options for VoiceOver Voices
• Voice Presets for Siri Voices
• A New VoiceOver Gesture for Accessing Siri Text Input
• Braille Screen Input Improvements
• Motion Queues
• New Sound Actions
• Assistive Touch Improvements
• Eye Tracking
• New Background Sounds and Controls
• Music Haptics
• Live Speech Improvements
• Voice Control Improvements
• Vocal Shortcuts
• Hover Typing
• Car Play Improvements: Voice Control, Color Filters, and Sound Recognition
• Magnifier Improvements: Assign Action Button to Magnifier Mode and New Reader Mode
• Improvements to Accessing Reader Mode in Safari

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is generated by AIKO, an automated transcription service. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

An Apple Vis Original What's new in iOS 18 for accessibility?

Hello and welcome.

My name is Thomas Donville, also known as Anonymous, as like every year, a new iOS comes in play and Apple brings out new features for us to enjoy.

So with no exception, this year we got a slew of new features for voiceover users, braille users, and other accessibility features that you might find of interest.

There's a lot in here to pack, so let's go ahead and jump right into it and you can hear for yourself what is new in iOS 18 for accessibility.

Live recognition is now an option within your rotor if you include it.

To include it, you just go to your accessibility and head over to rotors and include the live recognition.

This allows you to access live recognition quickly and easily by simply going to your rotor.

Once enabled, we'll just head over to live recognition within our rotor, where you are able to select one or more of the various detections you would like to be enabled.

As you swipe down or up within the rotor, you get the various detection.

To enable a particular detection, just simply do one finger double tap, double tap again and that'll disable it.

If you dismiss the rotor and keep the detection on, it will now live in with your dynamic island towards the top of your device or you can dismiss it from there as well.

Apple has now enhanced the voice over voice option within rotors, which used to be called language.

This rotor allows you to access the various voices that you have defined within speech under accessibility, but that itself has completely been revamped, which you can find within the voice over in the accessibility.

Double tap on this now.

You now have two section in here, first is your primary voice, which can be in any language, doesn't have to be necessarily English and they can mix.

And then the second portion, you now have additional voices you can add to it.

So you're no longer limited to just two voices within the voice speech area.

These are the voices I've added for myself, which you now can add as many as you want in a single new voice rotor.

So now when you activate your rotor to go to voice itself, you now simply swipe down to the person that you want as simple as that.

So no more language rotor and welcome voice.

We got a new improved audio ducking for better sound management.

So we are now able to do more than just simply turn on or off for audio ducking.

So with an accessibility under audio and then of course over to audio ducking button.

When you go in in this area now, you're going to see some of these fantastic things you can now set, where you can turn audio ducking completely off.

And now you have these following options, which is always going to be very helpful.

Improvement to audio ducking, along with the ability to change the volume for audio ducking compared to your speech and media.

Which now gives you more control of audio ducking to the way you want audio ducking to work.

Your tutorial now comes to iOS, great for beginners that want to learn how to use VoiceOver for the first time, or for those that just simply want to refresh up on your VoiceOver.

The VoiceOver tutorial lives within the accessibility under VoiceOver, as now as a VoiceOver tutorial.

Double tap this, select collections page, learn how to use VoiceOver.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to use VoiceOver to navigate and use your iPhone.

Some instructions may not apply if you've customized VoiceOver, and VoiceOver may be restricted throughout the tutorial, button.

And from here you will find the various lessons you can try out for yourself.

Learn introductory VoiceOver interaction gestures, button.

Navigate your iPhone with VoiceOver, button.

The VoiceOver rotor, button.

Practice advanced VoiceOver gestures, button.

Next entry with VoiceOver, button.

Now making learning VoiceOver easier for those that are beginners.

You'll now notice a new VoiceOver startup haptic feedback upon activation.

At any time you decided to disable VoiceOver from time to time we need to start, VoiceOver might simply turn it off or on, whatever that reason might be.

But upon activation of the VoiceOver, you will now feel a haptic feeling to let you know that the VoiceOver is now activated.

Ideal for those that are deaf that are not able to hear that VoiceOver is turned on.

Now of course this is an option that you can simply turn off.

Which can now be found within the accessibility of VoiceOver, button.

Under audio, VoiceOver sounds and haptics, button.

VoiceOver sounds and haptic, and then swipe to the right until you find the haptic, which you can double tap to turn off if that's something you want.

By default it's turned on.

There is now an adjustable delay before selection for more controls.

Under accessibility, towards the bottom, you should find the following item, and then from here double tap, where you are able to change, turn this feature on and be able to increase the time amount that you need for delay before selection.

The delay before VoiceOver will select items when touching the screen.

Really ideal for those that have shaky hands or issues with being able to select selection in a timely manner.

We also got some new voices for VoiceOver users in different countries, such as Lithuanian.

Lithuanian, button, Lithuanian, Ona, button, speak sample, and Kazakh, Kazakh, button, Kazakh, Aru, button, speak sample.

As I always welcome new languages for people to utilize for your VoiceOver voice.

Personalize your VoiceOver voice with your personal voice.

Now you can use your personal voice that you created with the personal voice feature as your VoiceOver voice.

So I'm going to add a new voice here, and in my case I'm going to go to English, go in here, and at the very top you're going to find your personal voice if you have created one, personal voice, heading, Thomas's personal voice, button, actions available, and to add that double tap, speech, back button, and you can preview it obviously, Thomas's personal voice, button, play, button, stop, this is Thomas's personal voice, terrible I know.

Once added, now you can use it as your VoiceOver voice, voices, Thomas's personal voice, and there's my personal voice.

As you can hear that's my personal own voice that I've created.

There's now several more things you can do to control your VoiceOver voice itself.

So let me give you an example here of some of the new things you can find.

So I have Tom here, and let's take a look at Tom.

And this is with any voice in particular that you're using for VoiceOver.

Now you notice in the past we had a couple of things, but there's a couple of new things I want to point out to you.

So let me go through what we have here for Tom, for example.

Now obviously each voice is going to differ, and so you're not going to get the same thing in every voice, but there's one in particular that got my eyes, and so I want to introduce you to that in a moment.

That's interesting.

So we're now able to control the volume, the VoiceOver voice here.

Here's a big one I wanted to show you, it's audio effect.

Check this out.

You now have equalizer, sure enough.

So when you double tap the equalizer, you have different bands you can control and for your equalizer for that particular voice.

We have ultra-low.

And high, and each of these items you have a control below this, which you can adjust to your liking for that particular voice.

There are now voice presets for Siri voices.

This is an interesting one.

So now when you go to Siri voice itself, so I'll do that right here.

You have all the controls as you would normally see, until you get to something new called Voice Presets.

Check this out.

So you now have different presets that the Siri voice will sound like, and what situation you want to use it for.

So by default, that's for default, I'll show you the four options you have.

Those are your new four options.

To hear those, just select one of those, and it changes the Siri voice itself.

Great for different circumstances, maybe perhaps reading books and things like, or maybe you just like those different formats.

I'll go ahead and do the others so you can hear for yourself.

And back to default.

A new voiceover gesture for accessing Siri text input.

Now this is for devices with the Face ID, where you have to swipe up from the bottom to initiate different portion that you want to access.

In the old version where we used to swipe up from the bottom, you get the first tone and you go up to the second tone, and that takes you back to the home screen.

The other option was to tap the bottom screen, hear the first tone, swipe up until you hear the second tone, and keep going up until you hear the third tone, which allows you to access to your app switcher.

Now they have added something additional to this method, and when you first use it for the first time, you're going to feel like this is a bug and I can't seem to get to my app switcher.

And that is because if you're like me, I used to just tap on the bottom and just flick all the way up, and then I was done.

It was just simple and quick.

Now you have to be a little bit more concise with your swiping.

So now when you swipe up to the second tone, you still get to initiate the home screen.

The third tone, you still get the app switcher, but now you have the fourth tone and that will allow you to access your Siri text input.

So here's an example.

I'm going to touch the bottom as you can hear the different tones.

First tone you remember that just allows you to know that you are ready to swipe up and then you got this attention that you want to implement one of the options.

Now that you heard four tones there, and now you get to the text input field.

Now you can ask Siri by questions by inputting text rather than initiating the Hey Siri or Siri voice.

I will have to say one of the biggest update for iOS 18 for voiceover user is the Braille screen input.

This has radically changed everything you have ever known about BSI and improved it that much more.

Those that have been reporting back to me are ecstatic about this.

And now you are able to activate the Braille screen input in a much easier fashion.

Braille screen input, heading, type in Braille, launch apps, and control your device using Braille screen input.

Place one finger from each hand at the top and bottom edges of the screen and double tap with both fingers at the same time to start Braille screen input.

To exit Braille screen input, slide two fingers in opposite directions.

Now allows you to launch a BSI by just simply tapping on opposite end of the corners of your device to activate BSI.

Not only that, but also brings in chords.

Yes, you'll be able to implement different chords to activate different portion of the screen.

In other words, you can access a notification center, control center, and all sorts of different ways with your new BSI.

Now moving on to other new accessibility features.

First one up is under motion.

For those in low vision and suffer from motion sickness in a vehicle in motion, this will help you prevent you from getting motion sickness or at least help you anyway.

So under motion, show vehicle motion cues, off button, dots appear near the edges of your iPhone screen.

They follow the movement of the vehicle and may help reduce motion sickness.

You can turn them on and off in control center, learn more, link, double tap to activate embedded link.

And of course, if you double tap that, it'll give you more information about this, how this works, but it helps you reduce your motion sickness in vehicle.

Now under touch or assistive touch, we have sound action that you are able to assign different sounds to perform different action.

And a new action has come to this area and it's now called click.

Click none button.

Now you're able to use the sound click as part of your sound action under assistive touch.

Switch controls now comes with a great new feature for those that can now use camera as your source.

And now under camera as your source, you're now able to assign the following to that camera.

Hand gestures, button.

Hand gestures.

Very much like what you've seen in the Vision Pro, it now comes to your iPhone.

And within the hand gestures option, right pinch button.

Now you can assign the camera to be able to detect your fingers for different type of gestures to perform different action.

Another borrowed item from the Vision Pro, which is now available to the iPhone for that could use it, is eye tracking.

Eye tracking.

Off.

Button.

Now when you go into eye tracking.

Eye tracking.

Switch button.

Off.

Double.

Eye tracking allows you to control your device using just your eyes. iPhone should be on a stable surface, about one foot away from your face.

Which allows you to now use your eye gestures to perform different action.

There are now two new background noise sounds to choose from along with new controls.

Those in the past that have used background noise, you're able to use different various background noise to help you to concentrate on things.

Background sounds.

Off.

Button.

Background sounds.

Switch button.

Off.

Double tap to toggle setting.

Plays background sounds to mask unwanted environmental noise.

These sounds can minimize distractions and help you to focus.

Calm.

Or rest.

Sound.

Rain.

Button.

Balanced noise.

You had the typical noises you had in the past.

Now they introduce two new ones.

Bright noise.

Dark noise.

Ocean.

Selected.

Rain.

Stream.

Night.

Night.

Fire.

And fire.

Select one of these items.

Selected.

Fire.

Back and we have a new set of controls.

Background sounds.

Back button.

Background sounds.

Back button.

Background sounds.

Heading.

Sound.

Fire.

Button.

Fire volume.

60.

Adjustable.

Swipe up or down with one finger to adjust the value.

Now you're able to control the volume of the particular background noise sound.

Use when media is playing.

Switch button.

On. Double tap to toggle setting.

Volume with media.

Funny.

Adjustable.

Swipe up.

Play sample.

Button.

At this point you can double tap to enjoy the new background noise sound.

Stop sounds when locked.

Switch button.

Off.

When enabled.

Background sounds will stop when iPhone is locked.

Which is now great that you have more control over your background noise to your liking so you can focus and concentrate.

We have a new music haptic for our DeafBlind folks that like to feel your phone in action when you listen to music.

So that is now located under music haptic.

Music haptics.

Off.

Button.

Music haptics.

Switch button.

Off.

Double tap to toggle setting.

When available, music haptics provides haptic feedback for supported songs.

Learn more.

Link. Double tap to activate embedded link.

Double tap that to get more information about music haptic.

Live speech now categorization and integrated with live caption.

Voice control now gets a better understanding of a broader range of complex action.

It also now includes...

Open voice control tutorial.

Button.

A voice control tutorial for you to go through and understand more about voice control.

Now one of my most favorite new feature in iOS 18 is the...

Vocal shortcuts.

Off.

Button.

Is the vocal shortcut.

Set up vocal shortcuts.

Button.

Teach your iPhone to recognize a custom phrase that you can say to quickly perform an action.

Audio is processed on iPhone.

This is a fantastic way to be able to use a specific command that you can initiate by using your voice to activate shortcuts and one of my favorite, if you don't like the word Siri to open Siri up, you can now redefine that vocal shortcut to something else.

I can now call it Thomas and will open up Siri automatically.

Among many, many other things you can now do with vocal shortcuts.

Another really great low vision feature for our low vision listeners out there is now under keyboard and typing, you now have something called...

Hover typing.

Off.

Button.

Hover typing.

This allows you to define the size of the text, the color of the text, the background of the text.

That allows you to give a bigger, provides you with larger customizable text.

CarPlay also gives a little love for our low vision folks out there as well.

As it includes voice control, color filters, and sound recognition.

For those that like to use a magnifier, now comes a reader mode, along with your action button to be able to assign magnifier to the action button.

Magnifier.

Turn your iPhone into a magnifying glass to zoom in on and detect objects near you.

Once assigned to your action button, it now becomes a magnifier button.

When activated, reader mode now in Safari gets a refresh.

So now when you come to an article you like to read, it's much simpler to access the reader mode.

The new page button, or the page menu button, now allows you to quickly access to the reader mode.

Now you get the heading of the article, and now you can double tap to listen to page.

Much easier access than it was before.

So there you have it, what's new in iOS 18 for voiceover users in terms for accessibility.

Lots of new features, especially for our BSI users, and one of my favorite is the vocal shortcut.

And now we have more controls of our speech, and now being able to access those particular voices regardless of language and our rotor of voice.

Hope you enjoyed this podcast.

My name is Thomas Donville, also known as Notamouse, until next time, buh-bye. the world. you you