When it comes to electronics, it should be accessible for everyone, regardless of whatever handicap someone may have. Apple takes this seriously, and has introduced a new accessibility feature in both macOS, iOS, and iPadOS called Voice Control.
What is Voice Control?
Voice Control is a new Accessibility feature on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad devices (with macOS Catalina and iOS 13, respectively) that allows you to control your device entirely just with your voice. It's designed to help those who cannot operate traditional input devices get the most out of their computer, phone, or tablet.
Using Voice Control improves dictation with rich text editing features, and you can comprehensively interact with apps and navigate around through the use of labels next to clickable items or grids to exactly choose where you want to zoom in to or select or drag.
With Voice Control, you'll be able to do things like launch apps, select emoji, select options, send messages, make calls, and pretty much everything else, all with just your voice. It's all thanks to the system of labels and grids.
Accessibility for iPhone and iPad: The ultimate guide
How do you use Voice Control?
Voice Control is activated through spoken cues. Everything on the screen that you can interact with will be labeled, and you tell Siri which one you want to pick or take action with. It can also be used to simulate actions like long presses, swipes, and gestures, just by telling Siri to do so.
- How to use Voice Controls on iPhone and iPad
- Everything you can do with Voice Control on iPhone and iPad
- How to use Voice Controls on Mac
Is it still private and secure?
Apple has always been very serious about user data and privacy. They stated in the keynote that your voice, when used with Voice Control, is processed on the device only (Siri speech recognition tech), and nothing is sent to or stored by Apple.
Questions?
Voice Control is a brand new Accessibility feature that is now available in iOS 13, which releases on Sept. 19. It is coming to iPads with iPadOS 13 on Sept. 30, and macOS Catalina sometime this fall. If you have any questions regarding it, make sure to drop it in the comments and we'll do our best to help!
September 2019: Updated for iOS 13 public release.
