Apple Announces New Features As A Tool For People With Disabilities

Apple brings a variety of new features to the software on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. (photo: doc. apple)

JAKARTA - This year looks like it will be Apple's biggest year by bringing a variety of new features to the software on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.

First, Apple is rumored to be testing a Live Caption feature that can copy any audio content, such as FaceTime calls, video conferencing apps (with automatic attribution to identify the speaker), video streaming, or live conversations in English on its devices.

Similar to Google's Live Caption feature, Apple says the captions will be generated on the user's device to keep the information private. The beta will launch later this year first in the United States (US) and Canada for iPhone 11 and later, iPad with A12 Bionic CPU and later, and Mac with Apple Silicone CPU.

Meanwhile, Apple will also expand the controls on its Watch devices, where Assistive Touch gesture recognition will be integrated with Quick Actions that can recognize double pinches to end calls, dismiss notifications, take pictures, pause or play media, and start training.

Furthermore, Apple Watch is also easier to use for people with physical and motor disabilities with a new mirroring feature that will add remote control from a paired iPhone.

Apple Watch Mirroring includes technology pulled from AirPlay, making it easier to access Watch features without relying on the user's ability to tap on its tiny screen or which can be activated by voice control.

Launching the company's official website, Wednesday, May 18, Apple also launched Sound Recognition with iOS 14 to capture certain sounds such as smoke or running water alarms and warn users who may be deaf or hard of hearing, and this feature can also be customized.

In addition, there are new improvements to the VoiceOver screen reader application, Speak Selection, and the Speak Screen feature also comes with added support for 20 local and new languages.

The languages include Arabic (World), Basque, Bengali (India), Bhojpuri (India), Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Farsi, French (Belgium), Galician, Kannada, Malay, Mandarin (Liaoning, Shaanxi, Sichuan), Marathi, Shanghai (China), Spain (Chile), Slovenia, Tamil, Telugu, Ukraine, Valencia and Vietnam.

Another new feature is the Buddy Controller, which combines two game controllers into one so a friend can help someone play their game, similar to the Copilot feature on the Xbox.

These features were announced just ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day on May 19, and are claimed to be rolling out to Apple devices by the end of this year at the latest.