Apple iPhone can be a baby monitor, echo alarms and more
A light that turns red when your baby cries might be handy if you’re hard of hearing. It’s among an increasing list of iPhone accessibility features.
A light that turns red when your baby cries might be handy if you’re hard of hearing. Having your iPhone display text sized at 130 per cent might be useful if you’re without your reading glasses.
I’ve been trying iPhone accessibility features that help those with sight, hearing, mobility and cognitive issues, and more.
These iPhone accessibility capabilities are generally little known until you need them. But don’t dismiss them as irrelevant. I’ve used the magnifier to read the tiny font on tiny manuals that accompany some tech gadgets. Without accessibility, I’d be cactus using my phone apps without my specs. You might have a friend who struggles with using their phone. You can help them set up these features.
Vision
iPhones can help you navigate menus and access content you can’t clearly see in several ways.
Voiceover announces app names as you navigate menus and read messages and emails.
You can access it in the accessibility settings, but it’s easier to switch on using a voice command: “Hey Siri, turn voiceover on”.
You have to change how you click through apps (a double click) or move backwards through menus (a drag and lift gesture).
The second option is a larger font. That’s set up in the display and text section of settings.
A slider lets you increase the text size and you can permanently switch to bold, increase screen contrast and reduce transparency to enhance readability. I found larger text throws out the formatting of screen areas .
The third option, the zoom feature, lets you enlarge the entire screen, or a section of it in a window you drag across the screen to enlarge text as you read it. If you set the zoom region setting to “windows zoom”, you don’t lose the formatting of the screen beneath the window.
There are other ways to change the settings. The control centre menu in settings lets you add accessibility features to the control centre that you drag down from the right top of the display.
A second option – the accessibility shortcut – press the power button three times to display a menu of up to 17 options on your iPhone screen. You choose which menu items to display in accessibility shortcut settings.
You might find it inconvenient to access the settings app to access these items. There is a better way. The control centre in settings lets you add accessibility features to the control centre that you drag down from the right top of the display. You can trigger them from there.
There’s also the accessibility shortcut. You press the power button three times to display a menu of up to 17 accessibility options on your iPhone screen. You choose which menu items to display in accessibility shortcut settings.
Hearing
You can link more than 175 hearing aids and sound processors to an iPhone by Bluetooth, and have audio routed to them.
Out and about, you can use the Live Listen feature that turns an iPhone into a microphone you hold in front of people and again listen through your hearing aids or AirPods.
If you have AirPods Pro and an iPhone running iOS15, you can trigger a feature called conversation boost which zeros in on the voice of the person you’re looking at and reduces ambient noise.
Like many people I suffer some hearing loss in higher frequencies but less in others. iPhones can adjust for this.
You can input an audiologist created audiogram through the custom audio set up in the Audio/Visual section of settings. You can even snap a photo of a standard audiogram result on paper and input that. Alternatively you can create an audio profile using apps such as Mimi Hearing Test and SonicCloud Personalised Sound.
You can configure triggering of audio options through the Control Centre. The button has an ear icon.
Sound recognition
Visual alerts offer a clever way to alert you to noise around home you may miss due to hearing loss or wearing a noise cancelling headset.
First, switch on the sound recognition system buried in accessibility settings.
Apple has used machine learning to train iPhones with its A15 chip to recognise 15 types of sounds: fire, siren and smoke alarms, cats and dogs, an appliance, car horn, door bell, door knock, glass breaking, kettle, running water, baby crying, coughing and shouting.
You can choose any combination of these and switch and receive a notification when a sound registers.
My iPhone recognised a door knock, and the chimes from my air fryer, but it didn’t recognise my kettle boiling (there’s no whistle) and notified me of running water only when significant volume was running.
Be careful about trusting your phone to pick up safety alarm sounds unless you first test this. An iPhone may pick up the doorbell when you’re at the back of your home, but again test it.
You can set up your phone to offer more than a notification. You might have a smart light go red when your appliance beeps or your baby cries. For that, you buy and install a coloured smart light, activating it through the Apple Home app and creating an alert scene.
In the shortcuts app, you create an automation that causes the light to go red when the sound is activated and link that to the sound recognition system.
Be aware that you need your phone with you. No phone, no functions. Perhaps Apple will extend it to the HomePod Mini one day. You can access many features on an iPad, even a Mac, and you get notifications on Apple Watch.
Apple offers extra information to help with these functions. There are workshops, YouTube videos, even computer clubs based around assistive technology, a special disability support number and you can go to an Apple store for help.
