Later this year, Apple is set to introduce accessibility features such as voice shortcuts, music haptics, and eye tracking.” With the goal of enhancing accessibility on the company’s devices, the AI-powered improvements are anticipated to be included in the iOS 18 updates from the iPhone maker.
The front-facing camera of an iPad or iPhone will be used for eye tracking, which is intended for people with physical limitations, to navigate program features in addition to physical buttons, swipes, and other motions.
Apple claims that the features would leverage on-device machine learning, for which it will retain data locally on the device and not share it with the firm.
Users with hearing difficulties are intended to employ music haptics. To add taps, textures, and subtle vibrations to the music’s audio, the feature will leverage the iPhone’s taptic engine.
To make music more accessible in their apps, developers can now access music haptics through an API made available by Apple.
Users can assign unique utterances to trigger Siri to initiate complex activities and shortcuts with vocal shortcuts on iOS 18, which will be accessible for both iPhones and iPads.
An ability for its gadgets to detect and comprehend unusual speech will be included in upcoming upgrades. “Enhanced speech recognition for a wider range of speech” will be possible with this innovation, which will employ on-device machine learning to listen for unusual speech.
Additional forthcoming functionalities declared by the organization encompass automobile motion cues, which have the potential to mitigate motion sickness among occupants of moving cars when utilizing iPhone or iPad devices. Improved sound recognition, color filters, and voice commands for CarPlay.
Also, the business revealed upgrades to VoiceOver, including additional voices, improved Braille Screen input, and hover typing for low-vision users.
