Apple Launches Redesigned Accessibility Site and New Support Videos

And you still can't lock the screen in Landscape Mode. This seems like such a simple thing, but you can't do it.

I wish Apple paid more attention to Voice Control:

1. Rent a better speech recognition engine from Nuance.
2. Cover all other languages, not just 3 variants of English.
3. Add a user vocabulary feature for all the languages they support.
4. Implement an easy language switching for text dictation, independently from Voice Control language.
5. Make it work in all text fields, including in Windows virtual machines.
6. Test the feature so it does not feel half-baked.

That would be a true, not marketing, honouring of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

Apple makes some ridiculously bad decisions regarding accessibility making you wonder do they actually ever ask people with disabilities to test things? Is Apple better than other companies sure. But some of their decisions are nonsensical

Trying to meet the needs of so many people with different physical needs is where Apple really shines.

I wish Apple paid more attention to Voice Control:

1. Rent a better speech recognition engine from Nuance.
2. Cover all other languages, not just 3 variants of English.
3. Add a user vocabulary feature for all the languages they support.
4. Implement an easy language switching for text dictation, independently from Voice Control language.
5. Make it work in all text fields, including in Windows virtual machines.
6. Test the feature so it does not feel half-baked.

That would be a true, not marketing, honouring of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

Agree with you 100 per cent on all your points. Voice Control has been such a half baked disappointment thus far. Apple has practically ignored it since launch. macOS Big Sur and iOS 14 brought few improvements worth mentioning. If you are in employment and disabled and rely on speech recognition on a Mac to get things done, long emails, documents etc you can forget Voice Control. It’s little more than a patronising toy. I have to run Parallels on my MacBook and use Nuance Dragon to be productive.As an Apple fan I feel let down. It doesn’t need to be like this if Apple showed Voice Control some love and investment and recognised the critical importance high quality speech recognition is to some disabled people who don’t have a plan B for communicating with the online world. Hopefully, someone with influence within Apple is reading the important points you make and we will see some significant improvements to Voice Control in 2021.

I would add word training to your list. I have jargon and friends with foreign names and Voice Control fails to recognise them time after time.

Apple still has some way to go for its devices to be truly accessible to everyone, especially those with physical disabilities who have problems accessing screens and rely on voice access instead. It should start by plugging some glaring gaps with the basics 1) the company needs to add the ability to end a iPhone phone call with a voice command as you can on the HomePod, “hey Siri end call” 2)needs to add the auto-answer feature to the Apple Watch cellular; it is a phone after all 3) needs to give users the ability to toggle auto—answer on/off by Siri voice commands “hey Siri turn on/off auto-answer. Ironic that a feature designed to help people who can’t touch a screen requires you to...touch the screen to turn it on.
4) Dictation in Voice Control needs to become more accurate and productive for long form dictation. Needs to go way beyond dictating a short message like “Happy birthday” or “I will be home in 5 minutes”.

Hopefully, on this the International Day of Disabled People someone at Apple is listening