What you need to know
- Apple is reportedly planning to boost accessibility features in iOS 14.
- Also seemingly confirmed are third-party wallpaper collections you can integrate into iOS.
- iOS 14 will help the hearing impaired with alerts for sounds like sirens and alarms.
Fresh leaks from 9to5Mac regarding iOS 14 suggest that Apple is bringing improved accessibility, integrated custom wallpapers and more to the next version of its iPhone software.
According to the report:
Our code findings uncovered a new feature that will be able to detect important sounds like fire alarms, sirens, door knocks, doorbells, and crying babies. Presumably, iOS will translate these alerts into haptics for people with hearing impairments. More new accessibility features would bring support for the camera to detect hand gestures while "Audio Accommodations can improve audio tuning over AirPods or EarPods for people with mild to moderate hearing loss". Further iOS 14 should offer the ability to run an audiogram on-device to help the users tune the audio.
These accessibility features would allow iOS to alert users, either visually or perhaps through haptics to important sounds like fire alarms or sirens. It would be a massive improvement to iOS users with hearing impairments who currently struggle with hearing important sounds. For example, your iPhone could perhaps alert you to the sound of a knock on the door, or an oncoming fire truck or ambulance.
The report further claims that Apple plans to allow third-parties to provide wallpaper collections for iOS that you can integrate directly into your settings and that it also plans to add categories to wallpapers.
An exciting change is it looks like third-parties will be able to provide wallpaper collections and integrate them right into iOS Settings. With the new wallpapers we typically get each year with Apple's software and hardware updates plus the possibility of third-party wallpapers support in iOS Settings, it makes sense why Apple would add improved organization with new categories.
More recent iOS 14 leaks include the confirmation of the iPhone 9 and a new iPad Pro, a brand new Fitness app, mouse cursor support for iPad, as well as Smart Keyboards with trackpads and a new AR app.
