Apple announces Live Speech, Personal Voice and other new special features
By ForGeeks Apple said it is working to improve the accessibility of products for cognitive, hearing and vision, and introduced new features that should help people with disabilities. The first of these is Live Speech, which allows non-speaking people to type instead of speak during calls.
Personal Voice will create a synthesized voice model, and the detection mode is designed for people who are blind or very visually impaired.
These features will appear later this year, Apple said, without providing a detailed timeline. They’re expected to appear in iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, as well as in some next-generation MacOS apps. All of the interfaces will likely be unveiled at WWDC next month.
Accessibility can be turned on or off in settings. It includes a customizable interface for the phone and FaceTime, which is combined into the Calls app with large and bright shortcuts for contacts. Messages have a large keyboard with emoji, and in the gallery, thumbnails are enlarged for easier photo previews. It can be used on both Apple iPadOS and iOS.
Live Speech will allow you to save frequently used phrases so you can quickly use them in a conversation. Personal Voice will prompt the person to read a set of text prompts and record 15 minutes of audio. This will allow for training so that when the user’s voice capabilities start to deteriorate, they can still communicate with loved ones.
Live Speech allows you to train a model, so when the user’s voice capabilities start to deteriorate, they can still communicate with loved ones.
Detection mode will interact with text-tagged objects and will read them loudly when hovering over them. It will be built into the Magnifier app, and will also offer people detection, door detection, and image description.
When these features become available, deaf or hard of hearing users will be able to use their Made for iPhone hearing aids directly on their Mac. Users who are sensitive to quick images and animations will be able to pause GIFs in Messages and Safari. Another useful feature is Siri speech rate adaptation, with settings ranging from 0.8x to 2x.
