Accessibility
The news that makes Apple's devices usable by more people. An area often underrated in mainstream coverage but central to the product philosophy.
iPadOS 27 expands Scribble — the feature converting handwriting to text via Apple Pencil — by adding support for Hindi and Marathi, two of India's most widely spoken languages.
iOS 27 developer beta 1 reveals a complete redesign of the AirPods section inside the Settings app, with a renewed structure reorganizing audio options, accessibility controls, and gesture settings.
Beyond the already-announced keyboards for Afrikaans and Baybayin, iOS 27 brings localized interfaces for English (Canada) and English (Philippines) and keyboard support for North American indigenous languages including Blackfoot, Comanche, Cree, Kiowa, and Tsuu'tina.
iOS 27 introduces child accounts as a mandatory system for under-13s, with age-calibrated protections active at the system level. Parents control contacts, apps, websites and time limits; children can request exceptions. A direct response to global legislative pressure.
With iOS 27, Siri AI allows adjusting not only the chosen voice but also the speech rate and expressiveness level, adapting the assistant's conversational style to personal preferences or the user's accessibility needs.
Apple brings granular Liquid Glass transparency control to macOS Golden Gate: a slider lets users move from fully opaque to fully translucent, a direct response to readability criticism of the interface.
With watchOS 27, parents can set up an Apple Watch for a child who doesn't have their own iPhone, extending parental controls and connectivity to younger users in a standalone and secure way.
Apple Intelligence enhances Accessibility Reader with the ability to summarize long texts and translate them, making written content more accessible to people with reading difficulties or non-native speakers.
iOS 27 adds new keyboards for Afrikaans, Basque, Baybayin, English (Philippines), Galician, Guarani, Luxembourgish, Xhosa, and Zulu, plus support for indigenous North American languages including Blackfoot, Comanche, Cree, Kiowa, and Tsuut'ina — one of Apple's largest language expansions in years.
Apple announced Wheelchair Control for visionOS 27: the feature uses Vision Pro's eye tracking to let users control a motorized wheelchair simply by looking in the desired direction.
Apple integrates Apple Intelligence into accessibility features: VoiceOver gets richer descriptions via Image Explorer, the Action Button becomes a trigger for live questions about what the camera sees, and Magnifier responds to natural language voice commands.
Apple expands protections for minors with a feature requiring parental approval before accessing new websites, and extends Communication Safety — already active for nudity — to violent and gore content.
The new slider to adjust Liquid Glass intensity in iOS 27 is not just aesthetic customization: it's a direct response to accessibility failures documented by the Nielsen Norman Group after the iOS 26 launch.
tvOS 27 brings locally generated subtitles from an on-device AI model directly on Apple TV, without sending audio to the cloud, and introduces on-screen text size adjustment.
Beyond the already-announced opacity slider, iOS 27 brings structural changes to the Liquid Glass design: search returns integrated into the tab bar, sidebars expand to the window edge, and Apple responds to documented visual accessibility criticism.
Apple confirmed during the keynote that Siri AI will initially be available in English only. Support for additional languages will follow, with no specific date announced.
Ahead of the keynote, Apple previewed an accessibility suite including AI-generated descriptions in VoiceOver and Magnifier, on-device automatic video captions, and a new FaceTime API for live sign language interpretation.