The New iPhone 3G S Provides More Support For People With Disabilities

On June 8, 2009 Apple has announced the new, iPhone 3G S it's newest iPhone. Instead of reviewing the features, I will discuss why is it a great advancement in the field of accessibility. Apple has implemented many accessibility features into it, which might become a large breakthrough for people to access mainstream, off the shelf products, without having to use extra assistive technologies.

Good or bad, the iPhone exists, many people are using it and talking about it. So far, people, with different disabilities have been left out of the fun, as they were not able to access it. Of course, the iPhone is not a necessity in a sense that the same functionality can be achieved with other devices, but for one argument, why should not all people be able to use the same device. Just as importantly, the iPhone has attracted an immense number of developers, who started to create applications, exclusively for it. So, while the major functionalities do exist in other devices, there was an increasing number of applications on the market which people with disabilities were not able to access.

The iPhone will include a built in screen reader, VoiceOver, which is now a standard application on the Mac. Voiceover is a screen reader, which allows blind people to navigate on the computer, hear what is on the screen, and what they type. It is an over-simplified statement, but you can read more about how blind people use the computer While it will be new for most visually impaired people to use the touch screen, some screen readers already allow this functionality. Apple added a word completion feature to its system, which allows people to hear suggestions from the phone so they don't have to type in the entire word, just to accept the correct suggestion.

In addition, the new iPhone will support high contrast and large font options which will make life easier for people with limited vision.

Apple also promises that the iPhone will be easier to use, since users don't have to remember hundreds of commands, rather, work their way through an interactive system. It is relevant when people using assistive technologies not only have to learn how a system works, but the large number of functions of their assistive software. This in particular will be a great help for people with cognitive disabilities. Interestingly, when Apple listed the disabilities on their iPhone accessibility page, they only included vision, hearing and motor disabilities. Hopefully it is just an error, and people with cognitive disabilities will find this new product more useful, as it appears to be.

Also, the iPhone 3G S will be easier to operate for people with motor disabilities, as it will not require the use of several fingers or hands at a time, and will be able to avoid fine movements.

While the iPhone already provides several options for hearing impaired people, extra features will be available, for example easily switching to mono audio.

Finally, while it should be obvious, practice shows otherwise, the iPhone will have an accessible documentation on the internet.