Apple’s 2025 Accessibility Feature Preview
Apple today announced new accessibility features coming later this year, including Accessibility Nutrition Labels, which will provide more detailed information for apps and games on the App Store. Users who are blind or have low vision can explore, learn, and interact using the new Magnifier app for Mac; take notes and perform calculations with the new Braille Access feature; and leverage the powerful camera system of Apple Vision Pro with new updates to visionOS. Additional announcements include Accessibility Reader, a new systemwide reading mode designed with accessibility in mind, along with updates to Live Listen, Background Sounds, Personal Voice, Vehicle Motion Cues, and more.
For CarPlay, this includes support for the Large Text option that has long existed on iPhones. Apple is also expanding the Sound Recognition feature for drivers or passengers who are deaf or hard of hearing. CarPlay will be able to provide a notification if it hears a crying baby inside the vehicle, and it will also be able to alert users to sounds outside the vehicle, such as horns and sirens from police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks.
I wish CarPlay had a small text option so I could see more of the song title.
App Store pages will soon include fields for developers to indicate which accessibility features their app supports, along with links to more detailed information. Examples include: VoiceOver, Voice Control, dark appearance, larger text, and more. Media app pages can indicate if the app supports audio description and/or captioning.
It’s safe to say that accessibility users have long requested a way to determine accessibility before downloading. For developers, the labels provide a means to differentiate between apps that prioritize accessibility and those that do not.
Ryan:
Gotta be honest, I do wonder if Apple’s apps will be honest about things like “Sufficient Contrast”.
I question whether the privacy nutrition labels are a net positive because there’s no verification. Maybe they just give users a false sense of security and help nefarious companies take advantage of them. The accessibility labels could be fake, too, but at least the harm would be along the lines of advertising features that don’t exist—rather than saying they protect your data when they don’t. And they should at least help raise awareness.
I worry that without verification, the features will be poorly understood and inconsistently implemented by developers claiming support.
I wrote back in 2014 that I wanted App Review to let us opt into accessibility testing, and show a badge for apps that pass.
Could be a great way to improve outcomes for customers AND give developers more value for the 15/30%.
[The] longstanding Magnifier app for iOS and iPadOS is making its way to macOS this year. Its implementation is clear in inspiration, as Apple essentially took the building blocks for Continuity Camera on iOS and tvOS to make Magnifier for Mac. The company boasts the feature will be a boon to people with low vision (like yours truly) to understand the physical world more accessibly. It’s one thing to describe it, but it’s another thing entirely to see it; to that end, Apple has made a video showing a person with albinism using Magnifier for Mac, with their iPhone clipped to their MacBook’s display, taking notes in a college classroom during a lecture. Magnifier for Mac integrates with another new feature this year, called Accessibility Reader, which, with Magnifier, will “[transform] text from the physical world into a custom legible format.”
Previously:
- iOS 18.4: Ambient Music
- Apple’s 2023 Accessibility Feature Preview
- Misleading and Inaccurate iOS Privacy Labels
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Truly impossible to comprehend that the company leading the accessibility charge is the same company leading the grey-on-white/which window is the active one? readability charge. Pick a lane, Apple.
