Apple
iOS 18 will bring eye tracking and other new accessibility features
Apple today announced new accessibility features for the iOS 18 operating system releasing later this year, one of these is the eye-tracking capability.
Here are the new iOS 18 accessibility features:
- Eye Tracking
- Music Haptics
- Vocal Shortcuts and Atypical Speech
- Vehicle Motion Cues
The eye-tracking capability utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) at its core and provides users with a way to interact with the device. The feature uses front-facing cameras on iPads and iPhones to set up and calibrate.
Behind the scenes, it has on-device machine learning to navigate through on-screen apps under eye movement. Eye-tracking doesn’t require extra hardware or accessories. It enables functionality such as physical buttons, swipes, and other gesture capabilities solely with eyes.
Music Haptics
It lets deaf or hard of hearing people experience music on iPhone through the Taptic Engine. It plays taps, textures, and vibrations to the audio of the music.
Voice Shortcuts
New Vocal Shortcuts on iPhone and iPad let users assign custom utterances that Siri can understand to launch shortcuts and complex tasks.
Another feature in this lineup is Atypical Speed with an option for enhancing speech recognition for a wider range of speech. It recognization speech patterns and is designed for users with acquired or progressive conditions.
Vehicle Motion Cues
This helps to reduce motion sickness for passengers on the go. Vehicle Motion Cues shows animated dots on the edges of the screen to represent changes in vehicle motion to reduce sensory conflict without interfering with the main content.
Using built-in sensors in iPhone and iPad, the feature recognizes when a user is moving and responds accordingly.
Apple will release iOS 18 at the annual WWDC24 event in June this year. The rollout will begin somewhere in the third quarter.
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