Accessibility Features for iOS

Apple's iOS products provide many accessibility features to support your vision, physical and motor, hearing, and learning needs. The following features are some of the top accessibility options for iOS users.

You can enable many of these features with shortcuts.

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut, then select the features that you use the most.

To add them to your Control Center, which is found by swiping down from top right corner:

Go to Settings > Control Center, then tap next to the accessibility features that you use the most.

Of course, you can always ask Siri to enable these features for you.

Below are some examples of accessibility features that are available on iOS devices, categorized by different senses:

image of three iOS accessibility features screens

Vision

image of three iOS vision features screens

Voiceover
- Provides spoken feedback to the user, even when they cannot see the screen.
- Gesture-based, meaning various actions utilize various hand gestures that can fully operate your iOS device.
  - Examples:
    - Swipe with one finger to select next or previous item on screen.
    - Swipe with three fingers to scroll pages.
    - Two-finger swipe enables the whole screen to be read aloud from the top.
  - Practice feature is available so you can learn gestures without affecting your device by accident.
  - Available to be combined with Braille displays, across all iOS devices including Mac and Apple TV (requires Siri Remote).

Spoken Content
- Voiceover without the gesture controls.
- Helpful for those with partial vision disabilities or who need additional assistance reading/typing content on their devices.
- Available in over 60 languages/locales currently, with the list growing.
- Available on iOS devices excluding Apple TV.

Magnifier
- Uses your device's camera to magnify objects around you, such as a food menu or door sign. Can be combined with the flash on the devices and apply filters to the image on the screen to further assist the user.
- Door and Person Detection allows your device to provide audible or haptic feedback if the camera detects doors or people in front you to give the user specific description. Text will display on the screen when detecting certain objects.
- Assists with navigation and gives details about distance from objects in camera view.

Display Settings/Text Size/Zoom
- Zoom in on your phone with internal magnifying glass that temporarily boosts the screen for close-up reading
- Increase text font size to assist users who do not need audible feedback but would like easier to read font.
- Colorblind settings allow colors to be inverted or adjusted to the users liking.

Audio Descriptions
- Various movie and TV show titles include AD features to provide assistance when watching content and wanting audible description of the scenes.
  - Look for an AD symbol for content you wish to view (within iTunes store or Apple TV app, other video apps may vary)

Reduce Motion (Accessibility > Motion)
- This feature will decrease the movement of onscreen elements. Some screen actions, such as moving between apps or launching apps, become visually simpler for motion sensitivity and lessening strain on the eyes.
- Only apply the Reduce Motion setting for the apps desired.

Hearing

Live Captions
- Transcribe audio using your device's microphone and provides text description on your display.
- Applicable to phone calls, FaceTime calls, and web content.

Made for iPhone Hearing Devices (List of Compatible MFI devices)
- Several of the top hearing aid and audio device companies have partnered with Apple to make it easy to pair those devices with your iPhone or iPad.
- Many use Bluetooth technology to make the pairing process simple. There may be additional options when recognized as a hearing aid companion in the Accessibility settings.

Sound Recognition
- Identifies specific sounds around your environment to allow for specific notifications to your device. For example, when an appliance is running or even a doorbell sound.

Live Listen
- When using paired headphones or hearing devices, this feature allows your iOS device to improve clarity to someone speaking with you.
- Useful when trying to listen to someone in a crowded or loud environment, like a busy restaurant.

Mobility

image of two iOS mobility features screens

Voice Control
- Navigate your device simply using your voice.
- Speak names, letters, symbols, etc. to send messages or type.
- Create custom commands to perform actions. There is a full list of commands available in the Voice Control section of Accessibility.

Switch Control
- Allows control of devices using an external controller that can pair to the device, such as a game controller, switch, keyboard, etc.
- Fully customizable for multiple devices and has the ability to transfer controls settings to multiple iOS devices under the same Apple ID.

Assisted Touch/Back Tap (Learn More)
- Customize gestures on your device in case default options are not comfortable or viable to the user (ex: double tap to a single tap)
- Back Tap lets the device perform an action available from more than 20 different options such as opening an app or taking a screenshot, just by tapping the back of the iPhone.

Cognitive

Background Sounds
- Creates a calming environment for those around distracting background noise, minimizing external noise and allowing the user to stay calm/focused.
- Can use this to mix with system sounds to stay continuously on for the user.

Safari Reader
- This feature strips away unessential content on web pages such as ads or distracting information to allow the reader to focus on the important text.
- Customizable whenever you see the “aA” symbol in the corner of the address bar on Safari.
Screen Time/Focus
- Helps restrict notifications or apps from getting in the way of working/studying.
- You can customize focus time into multiple groups, such as “Work Focus” or “Personal Focus” to allow different notifications to occur during certain Focus times.
- Screen Time sets a limit on using certain apps. It's great for children who take breaks from schoolwork but limits them to amounts of time that are safe for consumption.
- Gives parents flexibility on when they can allow their children to use devices or to prevent apps from being available to kids for long periods of time.

More iOS accessibility information