What you need to know
- Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
- Apple is spotlighting disability communities across its apps and services.
- Apple is at the forefront of making technology accessible to everyone.
Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day and in addition to its regular every day and constant attention to contributing to making its products and services accessible to everyone, Apple is spotlighting accessibility features, content creators, services, and more. If you're new to the Apple community looking for help with your accessibility needs, or if you are a long-time iPhone user and just never noticed how important accessibility is to Apple, today, you'll get a glimpse into how Apple makes it a priority every day.
This year’s #GAAD comes at a time when ensuring everyone has the tools they need to stay connected has never been more important. Accessibility is our collective responsibility. Apple is committed to making products and services that enable, empower and inspire every person.This year’s #GAAD comes at a time when ensuring everyone has the tools they need to stay connected has never been more important. Accessibility is our collective responsibility. Apple is committed to making products and services that enable, empower and inspire every person.— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) May 21, 2020May 21, 2020
Early this month, iMore's accessibility specialist, Steven Aquino, wrote about what Apple is doing all month long as part of Accessibility Awareness Month. Some of those things include offering resources for students with disabilities, spotlighting accessibility feedback tools and Apple's Accessibility Support web page (opens in new tab), new discount pricing for students with disabilities, and more.
Apple also added a Global Accessibility Awareness Day (opens in new tab) page in the TV app, spotlighting actors and actresses with disabilities making waves in entertainment. And as part of its Today At Apple (At Home) learning resource content, Apple has included additional content spotlighting accessibility.
The Apple.com (opens in new tab) Home page today includes a section specifically to help you explore all of the accessibility features iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV have to offer.
Pop on over to the Today tab in the iOS and iPadOS App Stores to read five incredible stories from developers and people in disability communities that are making big strides in making technology more accessible.
- An interview with athlete Rob Balucus (opens in new tab) details how this para triathlete helped bring handcycling support to the Strava app.
- A spotlight on (opens in new tab) the text-to-speech app Voice Dream Reader and its developer, Winston Chen's path to becoming a champion for accessibility.
- A story of how one early game tester helped unlock (opens in new tab) colorblind options for the color-mixing puzzle game Tint.
- A detailing of SonicCloud, a hearing enhancement app that makes it possible (opens in new tab) for people with partial hearing loss, due to any number of different reasons, to attune the timber of phone calls, podcasts, and more to a personalized frequency that helps them hear better.
- An account of the popular kids' games company Toca Boca and how its games are designed to help children see themselves (opens in new tab) in the stories in a variety of different ways, including prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs, and more.
In addition to these powerful and inspirational stories, Apple has a list of apps for accessibility (opens in new tab) that covers a variety of apps that support voice control, like Ulysses (opens in new tab), 1Password (opens in new tab), and Things (opens in new tab). There are also accessibility apps for vision, speech, and hearing including MBraille (opens in new tab), Proloquo4Text (opens in new tab), and the ASL App (opens in new tab). There is a huge list (opens in new tab) of apps covering a wide variety of accessibility needs, including apps to help people better understand other's accessibility needs.
