Apple Previews New Accessibility Features Coming Later This Year: Accessibility Nutrition Labels, Magnifier for Mac, Braille Access Mode, and More

Can say with honesty. I had not even use any of those when they come. Curious how many use the features regularly. Probably for several months and later stop playing with them. 16 pro max.

I think this could be an awesome feature.

I really struggle to type using a qwerty keyboard and so being able to do so across apple's eco system will actually change my life.

No. I must admit, they're on a nice trend since 2024. I'd have loved more for mac voiceover obviously, but overall nice stuff! For braille access, I I'm not sure to understand, does this mean that I could use my querty keyboard like a perkins style with asdfjkl;? Or something else.
Edit: I just read on the website. This is going to be awesome!!! Let's go apple.

I believe it means that you can create brf files and posssibly have your own interface, like the one on the BrailleSense or BrailleNote.
I believe from the wording and the fact that you can type braille on the iPad using the qwerty keyboard that it also means being able to use a keyboard to type braille as well, yes.

The accessibility nutrition labels sound interesting. Also I wonder how the new accessibility reader will work with VO enabled? Cool stuff. :)

Taking on the note-taker vendors, with Apple's level of quality-control at present, and with their propensity to give themselves first-party advantages, like a hypothetical ability to read your e-books in Braille, so long as you use the Books app?

Accessibility labels? What, you mean like the highly effective "Privacy" nutrition labels, that just lie without consequence? But which would, if implemented, legitimise Apple's claim to recognise the problem of inaccessible apps?

Is this really what we want?

Or am I just being cynical again?

Yeah no I am not really for accessibility lables. I think, not for me, but for low vision users magnifier could be very interesting on the mac, but maybe it's just me. It's especially the braille ones that are interesting. I wonder what we could do with head tracking too. Good potential news for vision pro. Excited for the accessibility setting sharing with VO or whatever it is on ios.

What do you mean we can type braille with querty keyboard on ipad?

So far, I’m not really seeing anything I’d consider super beneficial, but maybe those features aren’t for me—and that’s OK. Not every update is going to work for every user. I’m curious about the accessible nutrition labels, though I’m not sure how accurate they’ll be in practice, so I’ll have to wait and see. The new braille formatting and usage features seem cool too, but I’ve never really gotten the hang of braille screen input. I’ve never owned a notetaker or any kind of braille device, so I can’t say how it would compare long-term, but I do think I’d have an easier time with braille if I had a small, portable physical device I could pair with my iPhone through Bluetooth. Something where I could type directly into my phone without relying on screen input—that would be helpful. The braille screen input concept is smart, but these days I don’t feel like I have the patience or mental energy to sit and figure it out. In theory, it sounds great. In practice—at least for me on iPhone—it hasn’t been the most intuitive, so I’ve kind of shelved it for now and stick with what I know.
One thing that would be amazing is the ability to create a Neural Speech voice—like the ones you hear in ChatGPT, such as the Breeze voice. I’m not talking about basic text-to-speech here, but actual Neural Speech—voices that sound natural, human, and expressive. Even if you don’t have access to the latest device that supports Personal Voice, it would be great to have an option built into the iPhone for people to create a high-quality Neural Speech voice. I get that it probably comes down to computing power and what the device can handle, which is fair, but still—we deserve better human-like voices for VoiceOver. Apple keeps making headway with natural-sounding speech in other areas of the OS, Sirri, so what about VoiceOver? Where’s that same level of effort? Honestly, all the VoiceOver voices kind of sound the same. They’re rebranded, slightly adjusted, but the inflection is minimal, the tones are flat, and they don’t feel alive or dynamic. You can slap a new name on them, but they still feel like the same old voice with a new package. Even with the “enhanced” versions, I still prefer the regular Samantha voice over the enhanced one—it sounds better to me. Apple talks a lot about getting more natural voices out there, but I’m not seeing that same quality brought to VoiceOver.
I use the Amazon Alexa app to read most of my Kindle books, and yes, Amazon is a multi-million dollar company, so it’s not a shock that Alexa sounds good. But even then, Alexa could offer more voice variety and flexibility. We’re not asking for perfection—just something that feels like it was built for humans, not robots.

These new accessibility features sound very cool. I have to admit when I read "accessibility nutrition labels", the first thing that came to my mind was, you guessed it, nutrition. As in, healthy eating. That has been something which I need to work on I admit, and my initial thought was the ability to better read various food/beverage labels. But as I read further, it clicked and I for one think this is a good idea. Also the Accessibility Reader mode will be great. Perhaps that's more what I was thinking would be the case with these new labels. The Braille stuff sounds neat, and I hope those of us with the NLS eReaders will eventually be able to join in the fun. Not that my eReader isn't good enough, but ya know practice is always a good thing.

Hi,

I am especially looking forward to the accewssibility nutrition labels, the other features don't seem to be for my use case, but that's okay.
One thing about those labels though: When they're going to eventually become mandatory, I fear that some developers are going to tack them onto their apps without exactly knowing what those features are.

other then shairing settings to another iphone which i can't use cause i only have an iPad, thaught apple would give us AI in voiceover but no, mabey this means they will fix all the bugs, dout it but we can hope

What I don’t get about the braille access, is after reading the post linked above to Apple‘s website, from my understanding, you will be able to type in braille, using a querty keyboard. Let’s say on your mac, using your max keyboard? The voiceover portable Preferences on ios... Has been something I've been wanting for years. I.e, if you needed to, as an example, reset your device for any reason, you could back up your preferences and import them again, at least that's how i'm hoping this works.

Wait, guys, I have a question—so I think I might be misunderstanding something here. Can someone explain to me what “accessible nutrition labels” are? Is it something to do with health and fitness? Because that’s literally what I thought when I first heard it. After reading some of the comments, I feel like I’m completely off base. What are they, and what do they actually do? I genuinely thought it had to do with companies uploading nutrition labels for food products, and that we’d be able to scan or browse them directly on the iPhone—like read ingredients, calories, and so on in an accessible format. But now I’m guessing it has something to do with programming or app development? Maybe something in the App Store related to how apps are labeled or structured? Before I go and say something that makes me sound clueless, I figured I’d ask.

Our Indian languages apart from Hindi are not detecting in iOS we are raising complaints on Apple Apple is ignorant towards us it is very disappointing from Apple's point of you we spend lot of money to purchase Apple products but they are not bothered about our issues we have sent thousands of mail but no response this is really showing inferiority complex towards Indian community

I've been wanting something like the accessibility nutrition labels for about 10 years now, but better late than never I suppose. I would've called it something different though, like accessibility badges or accessibility tags like the gaming industry is finally going to start doing. It sounds kind of like how in video apps like the Apple TV app or Disney+ there are little icons on the movie or show page that show what features they support, like closed captions or audio description. I hope the new labels are just a server side change apple can make on the app store and won't require an iOS update.

The Braille Access thing is intriguing , but it doesn't quite make sense yet. We can already launch apps with BSI, I do it all the time. So I wonder what they mean by making an interface more note taker-like. BRF files directly on the iPhone will be cool though! The temporarily sharing settings is also a nice quality of life improvement.

Hi Winter Roses,

Here is how Apple describes Accessibility Nutrition Labels in its press release:

Accessibility Nutrition Labels bring a new section to App Store product pages that will highlight accessibility features within apps and games. These labels give users a new way to learn if an app will be accessible to them before they download it, and give developers the opportunity to better inform and educate their users on features their app supports. This includes VoiceOver, Voice Control, Larger Text, Sufficient Contrast, Reduced Motion, captions, and more. Accessibility Nutrition Labels will be available on the App Store worldwide, and developers can access more guidance on the criteria apps should meet before displaying accessibility information on their product pages.

The accessibility reader seems much like Microsoft's immersive reader implemented across it's office suite apps and the Edge browser.
Braille note taking seems to be coppied from braille note-takers. RIP dedicated hardware.
Accessibility labels from Applevis's accessibility ratings.
And the magnifire functionality from existing dedicated CCTV systems, RIP to them as well.
As always, Apple's skaille in delivering this experiences is admirable and enviable.
Looking forward to trying magnification functionality on Mac, Braille Note-taking on iPhone, and glad to see accessibility labels. Coodos to Apple if they manage to make it mandatory down the lign.

Oh, I understand what the accessible nutrition labels are now, but the name is confusing. I don’t know if that was done on purpose, but I would’ve called them something like accessibility tags, metadata tags, or even accessibility metadata. I’ve seen them before—I’ve come across them on websites. I didn’t know that this was the official name for it. So yeah, I definitely had the wrong idea before, but thanks for the explanation. Every day’s a learning day, and I’m always glad to ask questions when something doesn’t make sense to me.

Yeah I agree the name is a bit weird.
About the change being server-side: I am pretty sure when the privacy labels got added to the app store, you needed an IOS update for that too, I could be wrong though.

Sorry to rain onb everyone's parade, but I like myself best when I'm honest.

No one noticed the glaring problem with accessibility nutrition labels -- these labels only label which accessibility features are supported by the app. Nutrition labeles do not tell us which accessibility features are not supported.

Know why this is important? You'll find out when you try using an app that doesn't support an essential accessibility feature. Smile. It's kinda like what this so-called wonderful accessibility announcement did not say -- that all or even some of Apple's VoiceOver bug have finally been fixed. Didn't mention a thing about fixing bugs, rights? Maybe that's because no bugs got fixed?

Joy!

Bruce

For those wondering, Apple's decision to name the upcoming accessibility information section “Accessibility Nutrition Labels” follows their naming convention for the existing section on an app's App Store page which details how the app handles privacy and personal data, which is call “Privacy Nutrition Labels.”

I am honestly excited for the low vision features if the magnifier can have a positive side effect for us blind too on mac. I feel that this integration will be just brilliant. I won't even mind not having an empty what's new for voiceover as long as they fix some bug from the current release cycle, but we know that this will never happen. Empty what's new I mean, they will probably add the smallest feature possible maybe with some bugs so we can have something, on the mac. Time will tell. But overall? They have nailed it again for a second year I'd say.

@Bruce
Look. I hear what you're saying, and I agree it's important to be honest about where things fall short. Especially when it comes to accessibility. But I also think the way we say things matters. For instance, your message came off a bit harsh, and it’s possible to share concerns without sounding rude.
You make a valid point about the gaps in accessibility labels and the lack of mention about bug fixes. That’s definitely something worth highlighting, and I'm not going to try and open that can of worms. I just think we can be critical and constructive at the same time.

With my view on that out of the way, I'm honestly excited about what's to come. I am a bit concerned about the accessibility labels though. I have a feeling developers are going to try and use that to their advantage just to get more attention. Hopefully Apple enforces some sort of standards to prevent that.
Braille Access sounds pretty cool. I think we are slowly moving away from the era of notetakers, and I honestly think Apple has just proved that by adding such a thing. Reading BRF's natively on an operating system? Talk about a shocker.
Eventually, I hope they would allow DAISY books, but we have apps for that already so I'm not too bent on having that available.
I'm excited to get my hands on the beta and see what it has to offer.
Don't forget to back up your data if you are planning to use it on a primary device, in the situation where you do not have a secondary device. This happens to be my situation.

I mean, they knocked it out the park last year with the brail input commanders. this all sounds like sensible stuff, evolutionary rather than revolutionary and I appreciate that. I'm sure more interesting things will come next year when they've got their feet under them with AI.

I am interested in simulating brail display functions. Will this turn our device into a non-display brail display, simplifying the interface? Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick though.

Smile. Thank you for your comment. Always glad to hear and be heard.

In terms of features probably, but we surely can't have an actual braille display to read from for obvious reasons. That's why, as a complete side note, I am excited with AR as when we eventually get tactile holograms or similar, devices like monarch and braille displays will be gone. I am also curious to see if eloquence and alike will survive 2034, they better be all free by then at the minimum, talking at all the windows users who have problems with getting decent voices outside jaws..... hmmm.

Hi everyone,

I was hoping that my suggestions that I made to Apple made it's way here but unfortunatelly no luck.

Hi all,

I'm definetelly sharing this post with my team so that they can look at it.

Anyways, the subject says it all, this new feature will make my life so much easier.

But the thing is will it work with all Braille displays?

Looking forward to hearing more from this.

I do not think it's necessarily meant to work with a specific braille display. If I'm understanding it correctly, it's meant to simulate, or to behave, as if you are using a notetaker. It won't actually go ahead and just convert your braille display. It is a system-native feature.

Braille Access sounds like it extends the functionality of Braille Screen Input. It's interesting this appears to be coming to macOS as well. We'll have to wait until the first betas arrive to truly get a sense of how things work. Hopefully there will also be some other interesting changes as well that weren't discussed today.

Quite weird indeed, as mentioned several times. Can the Applevis team get in touch with Apple to have the accessibility ratings posted on Applevis be taken as basis? As for the Personal Voice feature, just integrate something like F5TTS into iOS or other platforms and you'll get access to what's called "zero-shot voice cloning", which lets you submit an already available recording and synthesize speech with almost all the characteristics of your voice and natural inflection. The duration can be as short as 15 seconds or even less, so F5TTS is great! I wonder whether we will still be able to continue using voices created on earlier versions or given the option to upgrade them, but will create a new voice to compare it with the old one. Too bad we can't create voices in other languages yet though, except for Mexican Spanish. Not even British or Australian English is well-supported. And why can the device not just filter out the noise and create the voice? You still hear the microphone hiss in the background, even if you record the sentences in a silent environment. Finally, I would rather have a few longstanding bugs impacting daily use than a thousand features introduced with little to no emphasis on nothing but promotion. This is why allegedly feature-packed, long-awaited updates or release notes with lists and bullet points that go on and on and on no longer make me as excited as they used to a few years ago.

I think this is a great idea. I'm not sure there is an advantage to a dev ticking some accessibility support if their app doesn't have it. I would see that if an app has been marked as working with VoiceOver then it means I have the right to hold them to account over it.

That's exactly what I am worried about regarding these labels.

OK, guys. Thank you for the valuable information. Off to geT my morning coffee and donuts now.

My thoughts

Since Apple says that it will be mandatory to add the "nutrition labels" later, I do wonder if an app will be deemed "accessible", just because turning on VO reads some/most buttons/page elements. Apple should look at accessibility labels to determine if an app's labels make sense, as well as alt text in images.

For example, a music player app called jetAudio has some labels that do make sense, even if not perfect, such as "navi menu", but others that don't tell you what they do, such as "tb add normal". It is labels like these which, in my opinion, make the app less accessible. You wouldn't know that "tb add normal" has something to do with creating/adding a new playlist unless you clicked the button.

Although for some labels, such as "tb sfx normal", or "tb lyrics normal", you can infer what they do. Stuff like this as well as unlabeled buttons should also be taken into account when generating the accessibility labels.

If these labels become mandatory, hopefully labels like "repeat ab arrow" will be replaced with meaningful labels, such as toggle repeat, as well as accessibility announcements that tell you what change you are making.

In my example, ""repeat ab arrow" does not change to a new label, or update the UI in any way that I can see.

Additional details based on images from the press release

From what I have seen in a YT video by Brandon Butch He says that the image of the CVS health care app says that the app supports a list of accessibility features, such as VoiceOver, Reduce Motion, etc., but from what he describes, there is no information about unlabeled buttons, unmeaningful labels, etc. From what I gathered by watching the video linked above, it is either a yes/no answer as to whether a feature is supported or not.

Note: I cannot see the screenshot myself. It may say more than was described in the video, so I might be wrong.

Guess we'll have to wait until June 9 for WWDC and equivalent beta software!

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I have used VoiceOver's image descriptions to pull text from the image of the nutrition labels. Here are the results with unnecessary info removed for CVS:

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Accessibility >. The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features. Learn More. VoiceOver. •. Sufficient Contrast. Captions. Supported Features. Differentiate Without Color Alone. • Reduced Motion. For more information, visit the developer's accessibility website.

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If anyone wants to download the images to perform OCR etc on them, you can get them here.

It appears that developers will have their own accessibility website. Whether this is something that the developer hosts itself or something that Apple puts together for the dev, this could give more details, such as indicating if all buttons are properly labeled.

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See the below comment for in-depth image descriptions provided by ChatGPT from all images in the press release.

You don't know that Apple doesn't have someone monitoring the forums. Just because they don't post publicly doesn't mean they don't monitor things. Moreover,
they do care about issues. I wouldn't want to be the one in charge of deciding how things are fixed and in what order.
You can't report things one time and stop. Continue to report until it is resolved.

I think the reason we don't see representatives from Apple engaging on AppleVis comes down to company policy. Regardless of how any of us feel about it, the reality is that Apple is one of the most secretive companies in the world. From reading articles over the years (sorry, I don't have specific sources), my guess is that Apple employees are bound by very strict non-disclosure agreements that prohibit them from engaging publicly on forums like this. This isn't a slight on our community; it's just how Apple does things as a whole. I would love for it to be different. Having Apple representatives engaging on AppleVis would be awesome. But I just don't see it happening anytime soon and feel that it would be unrealistic to measure Apple's level of demonstrated commitment to our community based on that metric.

I used ChatGPT to get image descriptions from the images apple has in the press release linked in the post..

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Descriptions of images from ChatGPT

I had ChatGPT describe the images including all text. I will remove unnecessary text, such as the seller/size for the Accessibility nutrition labels because they are not relevant. Any removed text from the image from either me, or removed by ChatGPT will be noted by an ellipsis (...) to note the end of the text.

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Image 1: Apple-accessibility-features-App-Store-Nutrition-Labels-Apple-Fitness-app.jpeg

Overview: iPhone screen showing the App Store listing for the Apple Fitness app, highlighting its accessibility features.

Heading: “Accessibility” (with a > arrow)

Subtext:

“The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features. Learn More”

Supported Features (listed in icon grid):

• VoiceOver
• Voice Control
• Larger Text
• Dark Interface
• Differentiate Without Color Alone
• Sufficient Contrast
• Reduced Motion
• Captions
• Audio Descriptions

Footer link text:

“For more information, visit the developer’s accessibility website.”

---

Image 2: Apple-accessibility-features-Braille-Access-02.jpeg

Overview: iPhone screen showing a series of voiceover-braille accessible dialogue bubbles.

Top heading:

“Braille Access”

Braille and corresponding English text in gray bubbles:

1. “This is a key part of his character”
2. “but as we move through the journey,...”
3. “By the time he returns to Ithaca, there...” ...

Final bubble (in yellow): “Who has a strong point of view here?”

---

Image 3: Apple-accessibility-features-Live-Listen.jpeg

Overview: Side-by-side display of an iPhone and Apple Watch screen with “Live Listen” active.

iPhone screen (blue blurred background):

Bubble labeled “Live Listen” with mic icon and status “On”

Text inside bubble:

“All right, everyone we’ve been exploring the journey of Odysseus and I want to focus on his character arc”

Apple Watch screen:

Heading: “Live Listen Capti...”

Full visible text: “All right, everyone we’ve been exploring the journey ...” (rest of text same as the text on the iPhone screen

---

Image 4: Apple-accessibility-features-Head-Tracking.jpeg

Overview: iPhone screen showing Accessibility settings for “Head Tracking”.

Top Bar:

“Accessibility” > “Head Tracking”

Toggle section:

Label: “Head Tracking”

Switch: ON (green)

Description:

“Follows the movement of your head to control a pointer on screen, and follows your facial movements to perform actions.”

Actions section (all items show “None”):

• Raise Eyebrows
• Open Mouth
• Smile
• Stick Out Tongue
• Eye... (truncated)
• Scroll... (truncated)
• Push... (truncated)
• Push... (truncated)

Pointer Speed Section:

Label: “Pointer Speed”

Number box: “50”

Buttons: “minus” and “plus”

Subtext: “How quickly the pointer moves with head movement.”

Floating black accessibility control panel (icons and labels):

• Notification Center
• Scroll
• Dwell
• Custom
• Device
• Gestures
• Home
• Control Center

---

Image 5: Apple-accessibility-features-Accessibility-Reader.jpeg

Overview: Two iPhones displaying “The Odyssey” in different accessibility reading modes.

Left iPhone (white page from Project Gutenberg eBook):

Top: “The Project Gutenberg eBook...”

Button: “Done”

Main body (only partially legible, but includes):

“Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the...”

Right iPhone (black background, white text):

Top-left: File icon

Title: “THE ODYSSEY”

Section: “BOOK I”

Subtitle:

“THE GODS IN COUNCIL- ...

Body text:

“Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the...” (Note: The right iPhone shows more text than the left

Playback controls at bottom:

Rewind icon, Play icon, “About 13 hours”, Speed: “1x”

Time: “0:00”

---

Image 6: Apple-accessibility-features-Magnifier-on-Mac.jpeg

Overview: A user is using a MacBook with large text magnification features on.

MacBook screen text (accessibility magnifier tool active):

“And the goddess answered, ‘Ulysses, noble son of Laertes, you shall ..”

Right side panel text in settings:

Preset 1

• Font: San Francisco
• Size: 32 pt
• Bold Text [toggle switch]

Color:

• Text Color
• Background Color
• Link Color

Spacing options:

• Line: Default, Medium, Large
• Word: Default, Wide, Widest
• Character: Default, Wide, Widest
• Readable Content Width

Icons visible:

Camera icon, live view mode icon, Horizontal adjustment slider bar

---

Image 7: Apple-accessibility-features-Braille-Access-01.jpeg

Overview: iPhone screen showing Braille Access interface with various options and math content.

Heading:

“Braille Access”

Options and corresponding text in gray bubbles:

1. “Launch App”
2. “Choose Item”
3. “Braille Notes”
4. “BRF Files”
   • Mathematical expression bubble (highlighted in yellow): “−7 + √72 − 4 × 3 × π / 2 × 3”
5. “Live Captions”
6. “Close”

---

Hope this gives you a bit of an idea as to what's coming.

I completely agree with Michael. If you look at the last Few AppleVis report cards a lot of issues were addressed based on the comments.

I think if we think of these tags not so much as an indication of whether an app is accessible with VoiceOver, or whatever, and rather a statement of intent from the developer then they maybe make more sense. As in a developer is saying "I support this". Then I guess it's up to us to challenge if it's not the case.

It's also something that puts accessibility in the face of the developer. Sure they can just say they don't support anything but at least it is making them aware that these things exist.

Personally I'm really positive about this.

None of these other updates feel particularly exciting. Although maybe if the magnifier on the Mac ends up being able to do image recognition things then it could be useful. The word "magnifier" puts me off.

I don't quite get what the braille note taker is for but I will read up about it before asking my usual dumb question.

audio description in apple fitness?