Apple has just announced the deployment of new features during the year, intended for its iWatch, iPod and iPad. They all have the same goal: to facilitate the use of these devices for people with disabilities.
Eyes, wrist, fist, voice: Apple has just unveiled a whole series of new features, supposed to help people with disabilities to use its products. Barring any setback, they will all be deployed via updates during the year.
Available on Apple Watch, this system allows you to control the watch without touching it. Concretely, it will suffice to clench your fist, to pinch with your fingers or to make a movement with your wrist to navigate the menus. AssistiveTouch works through built-in motion sensors such as the gyroscope and accelerometer, along with the optical heart rate sensor and machine learning on the device, to detect the most subtle muscle movements and muscle activity. tendons.
This eye tracking functionality will be deployed on iPad. This will be done through a third-party device, which will therefore allow the tablet to be controlled with its eyes. The system will make it possible, for example, to move a cursor with its gaze and to make a “tapping” while staring at an area of the screen.
Already available on iPhone, this feature will undergo a major update. Intended for blind or visually impaired people, VoiceOver will give users much more details about the images that appear on the screen, both on people and on objects, texts or even table data.
Still intended for people with visual impairments, Apple will offer sound backgrounds allowing better concentration (ocean and rain, for example). They will help to minimize the distractions that can be caused by sounds coming from the environment in which the person is.
- Other novelties. In addition to these three major innovations, Apple has announced the future deployment of a whole series of other small novelties. Let us quote, jumbled together:
- Support for new two-way hearing aids. Their microphones allow people who are deaf or hard of hearing to have hands-free phone and FaceTime conversations.
- Increased ease of adapting helmets to changes in the hearing capacities of people with partial deafness.
- New possibilities to change screen settings for people with color blindness.
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