It’s a well known fact in the accessible IT community that iOS products incorporate a great deal of accessibility features directly into their basic functioning. And yet, even though I’ve known this for years, I was stoked and surprised when I started playing with some of the accessibility features in my own iPhone in hopes to be better prepared on a presentation about AT for people who are deaf/hard of hearing. Here’s what I found…
- You can turn on LED flashing for phone calls and alerts in the phone. Besides ringing and vibrating, it can flash at you too!
- Turn on closed captioning for apps, when it’s available in those apps
- Turn on “Hearing Aid Mode” to improve sound quality when using the iPhone with certain hearing aids
- You can turn on the Bluetooth feature to work with blue-tooth enabled hearing aids
Now you can go and do it yourself. Just follow these simple instructions: Go to Settings – General – Accessibility and you’ll find all sorts of features to turn on or off, each categorized in its own section, such as Vision, Hearing, Learning, and Physical/Motor. Have fun!
