I hope I can use this to make my own voice with very accurate text2speech of my own voice lol.
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Apple Previews iOS 17 Accessibility Features Ahead of WWDC
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Wow! Only took them around 8 years, but I'm glad to see they finally took my feedback. Can't wait to see the next update to MFi hearing aids in 2030!
Samsung has “easy mode” that makes it much more like a traditional phone and turns on other accessibility features.
The iPhone could be set up in the same way but it’s a very manual process for which one must know what they are doing.
Biggest complaint I hear from non techies is “my iPhone says it’s out of storage and wants me to pay now” since automatic iCloud backups are turned on by default or during setup, and of course only come with just enough space to generate out of space warnings just about the time a person gets settled into the phone.
Think this is an acquisition from apple? Or are they about to put that $300 app out of business...
Yessss, I hope this is a sign that something like that is coming. Same app for all calls (video and voice) on all devices, with a synced call log and voicemails, would be sooo useful.
Weird that the text size options on macOS are only for those 5 or so system apps unlike on iOS. I guess macOS really is beginning to show its age, where it's complicated to introduce such a feature system-wide.
That Personal Voice feature could also go beyond accessibility. Imagine typing an iMessage and sending it as a voice message directly. And the other person can either listen to it or read the original text, so both crowds are happy -- the ones who want to read messages and the ones who like voice messages
I suspect that this will be an opt-in feature, like the way it was in iOS. Developers will need to change UI elements in their apps to use the Dynamic Type font sizes instead of hardcoded pixel values. SwiftUI already provides font constants that could be mapped to Dynamic Type values on macOS, as they already do on iOS. Catalyst and iPad apps that are good citizens on iOS should also benefit from this.
That was my first thought. I don't love voicing over videos myself, this could be pretty used.
Story Time!
Years ago I used to sell phones. Had a family come looking rather uncomfortable. Dad spoke to me saying they wanted to get their daughter a phone, didn’t know what phone but didn’t want anything fancy and was thinking a cheap Samsung (they liked the S4 mini). He honestly didn’t look like he wanted to be there at all.
We had a brief chat and I showed some phones. I mentioned iPhone and he scoffed and said “to expensive, she’d love one but”. I saw the daughter who was a young teen but looked rather awkward and tried to include her in the conversation Dad then piped up “she’s deaf. So she can’t hear you… so we don’t need anything special. She uses another device at home to communicate”
We were standing near the iPhones so I grabbed the 5C and enabled speech. I then wrote a sentence and highlighted it so speak, while showing the girl. She understood instantly and came forward and took the phone and wrote “this is really cool” and made the phone say it out loud for us all.
The look on hers and her parents face was awesome. Retail didn’t have many good stories but that one always stuck with me.
Years ago I used to sell phones. Had a family come looking rather uncomfortable. Dad spoke to me saying they wanted to get their daughter a phone, didn’t know what phone but didn’t want anything fancy and was thinking a cheap Samsung (they liked the S4 mini). He honestly didn’t look like he wanted to be there at all.
We had a brief chat and I showed some phones. I mentioned iPhone and he scoffed and said “to expensive, she’d love one but”. I saw the daughter who was a young teen but looked rather awkward and tried to include her in the conversation Dad then piped up “she’s deaf. So she can’t hear you… so we don’t need anything special. She uses another device at home to communicate”
We were standing near the iPhones so I grabbed the 5C and enabled speech. I then wrote a sentence and highlighted it so speak, while showing the girl. She understood instantly and came forward and took the phone and wrote “this is really cool” and made the phone say it out loud for us all.
The look on hers and her parents face was awesome. Retail didn’t have many good stories but that one always stuck with me.
Assistive Access is a really unique and interesting feature. It seems like it could help a lot of people from young kids to old adults who might find interfaces overwhelming. It reminds me of the Simple Finder and Panels interfaces from Mac OS 9 and before
100% spot on.
Looking back, we had these bread crumbs on MacRumors for a while. As odd and perplexing as some of the LiDAR stuff has been, this is what they had planned for. It was to get lidar on a phone "now" (back then) so it could be supported "in the future" for this purpose. If they put out the new phone now with LiDAR (for the first time) and this new software, they'd be raked over the coals in the media. So, "back then", LiDAR was odd; this is why. Quite clever.
Same for the oft-ridiculed MeMoji stuff. Gimmicky then (and now), but it's to be a face-sensing device so you can (eventually) hold it up and the phone can recognize "that's your friend Jimmy, that's your SO Ellen, and that is your child." Right now it appears to recognize "a microwave", but it's coming. That's going to be their AR use case, for low sighted people.
The digital voice thing is quite impressive. That's going to be fantastic for those who need it. Epic, indeed.
So yes, this is Apple's AI/AR. I'm willing to bet they had a group of folks who got together and said, "ok, so.. AI, eh? AR, too? Hm. Hey Bobby, wear this "foggle mask" and find all the things you need that we can do with iPhone and this new wizardry!"
Not bad... not bad at all.
iOS 17, and still there is no support for Multi-Language Siri. How hard can it be? She already knows it's not English, why can't I say it to read it in the language?
often I get: "Wife sent you a message that is not in English, would you like me to read it anyway?"
Why can't I just say: yes read it in Portuguese.
often I get: "Wife sent you a message that is not in English, would you like me to read it anyway?"
Why can't I just say: yes read it in Portuguese.
Agreed. You look at this gimmicky stuff and you think “there HAS to be another reason for it…right?” Sure, it could just be there for fun, but there’s still that part that wonders if there’s more in mind. Now, here we are and these “gimmicky” things are starting to look REALLY freaking cool and useful in a way people might not have thought of when looking at the original implementation.
Some features can prove to be really useful. Good to hear about upcoming features.
Yes, I am concerned that some people (scammers, kids goofing around, etc.) will abuse the voice accessibility features and will screw things up for those who genuinely need to use these features.
That is NOT what this voice feature is meant for. People who do not have disabilities should not be using the accessibilities features for other purposes.