What's new in iOS 26

Oct 1, 2025

Welcome to the forty-fifth episode of Access On, the National Federation of the Blind's Technology podcast.

Episode

Listen to the forty-fifth episode of the Access On podcast (Browser).

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Timestamps

Below is what's on the show this week, and when you can hear it.

Introduction 0:00
Braille Access 3:11
Item overview 42:38
Copied Speech rotor 44:01
Search for rotor items 48:17
Configurable magic tap 48:54
Container notifications 49:42
Reset VoiceOver settings to defaults 50:34
Share accessibility settings with another device 51:48
Liquid Glass may result in some movement of familiar elements 53:12
Accessibility nutrition labels 53:58
Changes in the phone app 57:20
Live translation 59:49
Expanded visual intelligence 1:01:48
Other messaging features 1:02:57
Apple Music Automix 1:04:06
Simplified Personal Voice creation 1:04:51
Changes to Apple Maps 1:08:20
Wallet 1:08:51
Simplified ring tone transfer 1:09:29
Low vision features 1:13:06
Closing and contact info 1:19:12

Transcript

Audio 1:

Live life you want.

Jonathan Mosen:

Welcome to Access On, the Technology Podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. This episode is devoted to looking at some of the new features in Apple's iOS 26. It's a big year for Braille users and we'll go in depth into the new Braille Access feature. We'll examine numerous other useful accessibility and mainstream enhancements for your iPhone, and have your phone reflect your personality.

It's now much easier to add your own ringtones. This webinar is made possible thanks to the Nonvisual Accessibility Initiative, a public-private partnership between the National Federation of the Blind and the State of Maryland. And there are many other initiatives making a difference to blind Americans that are funded by donation. We invite you to support our work.

Your contribution will help the National Federation of the Blind continue vital advocacy and programs. Right now your gift goes twice as far. Thanks to a generous challenge grant from HumanWare, every dollar you give between now and the end of the year will be matched, doubling your impact up to 50,000 dollars. You can donate online at nfb.org/donate. That's nfb.org/donate.

Or if you prefer, you can call 410-659-9314 extension 2430. That's 410-659-9314 extension 2430. Thank you for helping us build a future full of opportunity for blind people. And why not get involved in the organization transforming the lives of blind Americans? There is a place for you in the National Federation of the Blind. And we are stronger together. To learn more about the ways for you to be a part of our movement, visit nfb.org/join.

That's nfb.org/join. As we begin our look at iOS 26, let's address the obvious question. One minute we were at iOS 18, how did we jump from there to iOS 26? And the simple answer is that Apple is standardizing its naming conventions because it did get very confusing when you had all these different operating systems, different years old, different evolutions.

And now it's based on the year that it is mostly going to be used. So iOS 26 was released in September 2025, but it's going to be the operating system that takes us through much of 2026. And all the Apple operating systems have adopted the nomenclature now, so it makes it very easy to know whether people are running the latest version of the operating system based on the year that it was released.

Note that it is not called iOS 2026. It's only called iOS 26. So I guess if we're still using iPhones a hundred years from now and there's another iOS 26, well, we probably won't be around to worry about that problem. Let's begin by jumping straight into an accessibility feature of iOS 26 that is quite significant in its scope and its impact, and this is Braille Access. At the National Federation of the Blind, we are passionate about Braille.

We know that Braille is the key to literacy and to opportunity, so we're thrilled that Apple is spending so much time on this. I want to spend some time talking about what I believe to be the scope and the philosophy of this Braille Access feature.

As someone who once worked in product management for blindness note taker products, I can tell you that one of the challenges is that technology moves at such a fast pace and resources are so constrained compared to the resources available to big tech companies that it is hard for these note taker manufacturers to keep up.

Now, to some degree, the note taker manufacturers have tried to address this issue by going with more mainstream platforms such as Android, but that's not a cure-all either. And we've seen on some of these Android-based products the version of Android being run getting hopelessly out of date. So the iPhone becomes attractive because it's keeping up with the latest and greatest.

Obviously it is a mass-market product that also happens to be accessible. There is an increasing number of accessible apps that are available for iPhones. Some of them blindness-specific, but most of them not.

So we can stay on the cutting edge, we can stay in the mainstream and still have some blindness-specific products like Be My Eyes and Aira and Bookshare and BARD and many other things besides.

So in theory, iPhones should represent the best of both worlds. Yet there are people, some of whom are very competent iPhone users, who still prefer to use a blindness note taker sometimes. It's all about the physical buttons I think and just getting things done more efficiently. So it could be that iOS 26 for those people represents a breakthrough or at least a promising start from Apple. Education has always been a big focus for Apple.

And at the moment, note takers are pretty big in the blindness education market, and I think this Braille Access mode represents a pretty big play from Apple for the note taker market. Essentially they're putting forward the value proposition that you can give a kid an iPad and an iPad is something that teachers and those assisting the student and parents know about, they know what that is, and you can have Braille note taker functionality on that device and all the benefits of using an iPad.

Other people who may benefit from this Braille Access feature in particular are those who have the free e-readers from the National Library Service. With those e-readers, you can read BARD books locally on the device and other services as well. You can also connect your device via terminal mode to another device like an iPhone or an iPad or a computer, but they don't have any built-in editing functionality.

With Braille Access mode in iOS 26, you can have note take-alike functionality just by connecting your NLS e-reader to your iPhone. I'm go to demonstrate Braille Access. Now, some of this I'll have to describe to you what's on the Braille display because this is a Braille feature so you don't get a lot of talking all the time, but it is I think the most significant accessibility feature for blind people to come out of iOS 26.

If you're using a Braille input keyboard, then you can just press dots seven and eight together to invoke the Braille Access menu from anywhere. If you're using an 8-dot computer Braille table, then you may need to press dot-78 with the space bar, dot-78 chord. I'll go ahead and do that now.

Audio 1:

Launch app.

Jonathan Mosen:

And we're in the menu for Braille Access. The first item is launch app, and this is something that has been around a while in a different form. In the past, you could press enter from the home screen and get into a launch app function.

Now it's been moved to here, so there are a couple more keystrokes to make this happen, but there is a way around that and we'll focus on that a little bit later.

But the big advantage of doing it this way is that it is available from within any app. It isn't necessary to go to the home screen first in order to launch another app. But I'm going to press enter to go into the launch app screen. Now I've got a blinking cursor that shows me that I can type in the name of an app that I want to launch or the partial name of an app. For example, if I press PO, I'm Brailling that on the keyboard now and I will press enter.

Audio 1:

Podcasts.

Jonathan Mosen:

Now I can move through the matches. So I can press dot-4 chord, that is one way to move through.

Audio 1:

Pocket Casts. Back.

Jonathan Mosen:

So we've got two matches.

Audio 1:

Podcasts. Pocket Casts.

Jonathan Mosen:

And then we have a back button.

Audio 1:

Back.

Jonathan Mosen:

If I pressed enter on either of those apps, it would launch the app, and that's how the launch app works. So you can just press a couple of characters or even a single character, narrow the search down, choose the app you want, and press enter to launch it. I will say that this function is also available to Braille screen input users.

If you use the touch screen as a virtual Braille keyboard, if you have the Braille screen input gestures turned on, which I highly recommend, you can double tap both ends of the phone and at the home screen, that will get you into this launch app function. But I'm going to execute the back button now and we'll get back to the Braille Access main menu.

Audio 1:

Launch app.

Jonathan Mosen:

I'm going to press dot 4 chord to go to the next item.

Audio 1:

Choose item.

Jonathan Mosen:

This is another way of getting to the item chooser. I've often said that the item chooser is one of the most underutilized functions in iOS for blind people, at least in my experience of having trained some people over the years and talked to a lot of people about the way that they use iPhone.

When you have a very busy screen, sometimes trying to find the thing you're looking for can take a lot of swipes. Sometimes you can use VO with F to find something that you're looking for, but the item chooser is a really powerful way of getting the exact thing that you want. When you're in an app that has a busy screen, type what you're looking for, press enter and it should narrow what you see to a match for the item that you are looking for. I'll press dot-4 chord to get to the next item in Braille Access.

Audio 1:

Braille Notes.

Jonathan Mosen:

This is the first of two functions that may appear similar, so I want to try and explain the differences between this one that we are looking at now, Braille Notes, and the next one that we're looking at, which is BRF files. Braille Notes are a quick way to Braille into your device. They make no judgment or seek to do no interpretation of what it is that you're Brailling.

It just records the dots that you're Brailling in the file. That means that you could use this for Braille music or some sort of code that you've developed yourself. I know there are still people who do their own personal variations on Grade 3 Braille, for instance.

So you can just type dots into Braille Notes. These files are stored in iCloud, but they're not readily accessible through iCloud Drive. And that means that you can't find them easily on a PC, for example, to copy them somewhere else, such as local storage on your own Braille device.

However, the advantage of them being stored in iCloud is that you can use them on any device. If you have an iPad or an iPhone or a Mac, any of those devices logged in, all those Braille Notes are going to appear there.

And it means that if you have say a Braille display at home, maybe the NLS e-reader and you have a larger Braille display at work, then you can connect your iPhone and they will be available to you on any Braille display that you use as long as you've got an Apple device paired to that Braille display. So I'm going to press enter on Braille Notes.

Audio 1:

New.

Jonathan Mosen:

What you're not hearing there is that there's a dot dot dot after new, which means that if we press enter on that, which we will in a moment, we'll invoke a little menu, but I'm going to press dot-4 chord.

Audio 1:

Back.

Jonathan Mosen:

So by default, and I've cleared out all my notes so I can show you a default installation of this, you've got new and then back. So dot-4 chord again.

Audio 1:

New.

Jonathan Mosen:

That wraps us round and we'll press enter on new.

Audio 1:

New note.

Jonathan Mosen:

We can choose either that or.

Audio 1:

New folder name.

Jonathan Mosen:

You can create elaborate folder structures if you want. Let's say that you want a folder for home related notes and a folder for work related notes, or you decide to use this extensively for work related projects. You might create a folder for every project that you're working on. Perhaps you want a folder for music Braille and another folder for literary Braille. I mean, you can structure this however you want. I'll press B chord for back.

Audio 1:

New.

Jonathan Mosen:

And we'll press enter on new.

Audio 1:

New note.

Jonathan Mosen:

And then enter again on new note. Rather than just the blinking cursor, I have a Braille symbol at the beginning of the screen, but the blinking cursor is also there and that tells me that I can start Brailling into the device. So I'm just going to start Brailling. Hello, this is Jonathan testing. And now I can read that on the Braille display.

There is no speech in here because this is a Braille function. Now, here is something really interesting. I am in the NFB-NEWSLINE app at the moment. Because being the big news consumer that I am, I'm in the NFB-NEWSLINE app a lot. I'm going to press dots 7 and 8 together. You may remember that that is the Braille Access command.

Audio 1:

Braille Access off.

Jonathan Mosen:

Now I am in NFB-NEWSLINE.

Audio 1:

Highlights. Welcome Jonathan Mosen.

Jonathan Mosen:

Well, thank you very much. Now, if I press dots 7 and 8 together again.

Audio 1:

Braille Access on.

Jonathan Mosen:

Braille Access is on and right away I am popped back into my note and I can read, "Hello, this is Jonathan testing on my Braille display again." So it's a convenient way of getting back to notes that you might be taking.

But the really amazing thing I think about this is that your iPhone itself is not affected by the fact that you're in Braille Access mode, it's kind of taken your Braille display to a different place. But if I flick around the screen now on my iPhone by touching the phone itself.

Audio 1:

You are near 800 Johnson Street Baltimore, 21230.

Jonathan Mosen:

That is the NFB-NEWSLINE app. I'm not reading that on my Braille display. I'm still reading, "Hello, this is Jonathan testing on my Braille display," from my note. This is a very powerful feature when you start to think about it because it means that you could be in a podcast app or reading an email or doing anything you want and you have a note open pertaining to whatever it is that you're consuming on your phone.

You can Braille into that note on the Braille display while your phone is doing something completely different. And if you want to check out what the phone is doing that's completely different, just toggle Braille Access off by pressing dot-7 and 8 together.

You'll be back in the application and you'll be able to read in Braille whatever it is that is piquing your curiosity and then you can press dot-7 and 8 again and you're back in your note.

This is a real productivity win. One thing that's a little idiosyncratic in my view about this user interface is that when you are in a Braille note, dots-123 chord and 456 chord, which are the conventional commands all the way back to the Versabraille days in the 1980s for getting you to the top and bottom of a file are a little bit different. If I perform a dot-123 chord now, I am actually at the top of the file.

And if I press a cursor routing key, then I feel the dot-7 and 8 blinking there to tell me that I'm at the top of the file. And that when I start to Braille, I will be Brailling at the top.

If I perform a dot-456 chord, I'm on a button called back, which will take me out of the note that I'm in. So then I have to perform a dot-1 chord and then I can press a cursor routing key after the last thing that I wrote and that does get me back to the bottom of the file so that I can keep typing.

So it requires a couple of steps, particularly for going to the bottom of a file. But once you get used to it, it is doable in terms of navigating to the top and bottom of a file. I'm now going to perform a B chord.

Audio 1:

New.

Jonathan Mosen:

That has taken me back. And now that note that I wrote is simply numbered one. And the file naming convention may vary a little bit depending on what you've typed there. So as we do a dot-1 and 4 chord to navigate round, I'll perform a dot-1 chord to go up.

Audio 1:

New.

Jonathan Mosen:

We can create another new note.

Audio 1:

Back.

Jonathan Mosen:

And back and then one, which is the name of this file, and it's not being spoken by Samantha, and those are the options that we have. This is an opportunity for me to introduce a concept that is important in Braille Access and that is the context menu. The context menu is assigned to dot-7, and I think this is another curious user interface choice that Apple may revisit in the future if they choose to expand Braille Access functionality.

Because the trouble with assigning the context menu to dot-7 is that obviously when you are editing a file, the context menu isn't available because dot-7 works as the backspace key. So the context menu is not available in editing mode.

And if Apple expands the functionality and offers features within editing mode such as being able to set bookmarks or perform other functions that may be added in the future, perhaps this will be revisited. But right now we are on this file that is simply called one. And if I press dot-7.

Audio 1:

Move.

Jonathan Mosen:

We can move this to another folder. So as we saw, we can create as elaborate a folder structure as we want. I'll press dot-4 chord.

Audio 1:

Delete. Pin.

Jonathan Mosen:

If you pin this note, then it doesn't matter how many files you have, it'll appear at the top of your list of notes, which could be very handy if it's a note that you visit a lot.

Audio 1:

Back. Move. Delete.

Jonathan Mosen:

I'm going to delete this note, so I'll press enter to do that.

Audio 1:

Delete item?

Jonathan Mosen:

And I'll press dot-4 chord.

Audio 1:

Delete.

Jonathan Mosen:

And enter.

Audio 1:

Back.

Jonathan Mosen:

And now we have no notes. I'm going to go back.

Audio 1:

Braille Notes.

Jonathan Mosen:

And we are back at the main menu for Braille Access. The next item, which I'll get to by pressing dot-4 chord.

Audio 1:

BRF files.

Jonathan Mosen:

Is BRF files. And this is very powerful and this is the one that I tend to use a lot. The really good thing about BRF files from my perspective is that this one does appear in iCloud Drive. And we'll show you this in a moment. For now, I've cleared out my BRF files to show you what you may see if you've not used this feature before. So I'll press enter on BRF files.

Audio 1:

New.

Jonathan Mosen:

And we've got new. And again, it says dot-dot-dot.

Audio 1:

Back.

Jonathan Mosen:

And back. So if I go to new.

Audio 1:

New.

Jonathan Mosen:

I'll press enter.

Audio 1:

File name.

Jonathan Mosen:

I can now type a file name. When I first went in here, I thought, oh, you can't create subfolders at least within this user interface. But if I perform a dot-4 chord.

Audio 1:

New folder name.

Jonathan Mosen:

There you go. You can create a new folder from here as well and you can just start to type at this point. I'm going to press dot-1 chord again.

Audio 1:

File name.

Jonathan Mosen:

And I can see the blinking cursor on the Braille display, so I know that it's time to type a file name. And for this one, I'm just going to type demo and I will press enter. Now I have that familiar shape on the display that indicates to me that I am in a place where I can start typing.

So once again, I will Braille a few things such as, I hope you're enjoying this quick demonstration of some of the things that are new in iOS 26. And I'm just reading that back. I'm going to perform a dot-123 chord to get to the top of the file.

I'm right there and I'm just reading that. And I see a couple of, what do you call them, Braille-o's there, so I'm just fixing them as I read. You can obviously press the cursor routing keys to get to where you need to make corrections. It is very quick and responsive.

And the trick I showed you before where you can take your phone someplace else while you work on these Braille Notes, that applies everywhere in Braille Access. So it works in BRF files as well. I'm going to get out of this file. I'll perform a dot-4 chord, and it's showing back on the Braille display. So I'll press enter.

Audio 1:

Demo.BRF.

Jonathan Mosen:

And here we have now demo.BRF. That means that there is a context menu available. Now that we've created it, it will open the file, but it will open it in read-only mode. And I think the reason for this is that Apple is expecting that you will use this feature to read a lot of books from BARD or from Bookshare or other providers of BRF files. So if you want to edit this file that you've created, you can press the context menu key, that is dot-7.

Audio 1:

Edit.

Jonathan Mosen:

And the first item is edit. If I press dot-4 chord.

Audio 1:

Move.

Jonathan Mosen:

We can move it to another folder.

Audio 1:

Delete. Rename. Back.

Jonathan Mosen:

I'm going to press enter on the back button.

Audio 1:

Demo.BRF.

Jonathan Mosen:

I'm going to leave the iPhone alone for a moment and go to my PC, because BRF files do sync with iCloud Drive and they're readily available. To make this work, you're going to have to install the iCloud app from Apple. You can download this from Apple itself and it's also available from the Microsoft Store, which may be an easier way to get to it. If you just go to the start screen and in the edit box type store and press enter, and then you will be in a search field.

You can type iCloud and it will come right up and you can install it. You will need to log in with your Apple account and most likely authenticate with two-factor authentication.

You're probably familiar with that process. And it's not the most accessible thing in the world, but it's also not completely inaccessible. So you can go through and choose the things that you want iCloud to look after for you on your PC and synchronize.

iCloud Drive just happens by default. When it's all set up, you should be able to go to File Explorer. Put yourself in the tree view. So typically what I find works is that you press windows with E to get to File Explorer on your Windows computer, press shift Tab to get to the tree view, and then you press I for iCloud Drive, and press enter, and it should come right up. I'll show you that. In fact, I'll press windows E now for File Explorer.

Audio 2:

Home. File Explorer. List box. Quick access expanded.

Jonathan Mosen:

I'll press shift Tab.

Audio 2:

Navigation pane tree view. Jonathan, National Federation of the Blind OneDrive closed. Four of 26.

Jonathan Mosen:

And press I.

Audio 2:

iCloud Drive closed. 22 of 26.

Jonathan Mosen:

I'll press enter. Now I'm in iCloud Drive. I'll press tab.

Audio 2:

iCloud Drive. File Explorer. Items view multi-select list box.

Jonathan Mosen:

iCloud Drive has become increasingly capable over time. In our family plan, we actually have the two terabytes iCloud Drive plans, so that's nice generous storage and we share the two terabytes between us.

You can now share folders like you can in Dropbox and OneDrive, and that works very well, in fact. You could just store things here so that they're readily available on your phone and your other devices.

There are all kinds of things that you can do with iCloud Drive. If you put the iCloud application on your PC, of course, if you have a Mac, you're at a real advantage because all this iCloud functionality is just built right in on the Mac. I'm going to press the letter B.

Audio 2:

BRF files. Four of 28.

Jonathan Mosen:

And the moment you start to use the BRF files function in Braille Access, they create this folder for you. So when I press enter on it.

Audio 2:

Shell folder view. See users in iCloud Drive dot placeholder. Demo.BRF. Three of three.

Jonathan Mosen:

So there are a couple of system files that you don't want to mess with, but right at the bottom here we do have.

Audio 2:

Demo.BRF.

Jonathan Mosen:

And this file is the one that we just created, demo.BRF. So it's right here on my computer. And that means that if I want to, I can copy this file and I can paste it onto my Braille display if it has BRF functionality built in.

If you have the ability to edit BRF files on your computer, you can edit this file there, and of course, it will instantly update in iCloud. And the latest version will be available on your Apple devices that are signed into this iCloud account.

Now, thanks to the miracle of recording this part of the presentation, I have paused the recording and restored things to the way that they were before I started doing this demo. I wanted to show you what it was like when you went into this fresh, but I've been using this. So now what I want to do is press enter again on.

Audio 1:

BRF files.

Jonathan Mosen:

And we'll see what we have.

Audio 1:

New.

Jonathan Mosen:

Still the same new option there where you can create a new folder or file.

Audio 1:

Books.

Jonathan Mosen:

Now I have a folder here called books. If I keep going though.

Audio 1:

Demo.BRF.

Jonathan Mosen:

There is the demo file that we created that is still in the root of this BRF option, but I'm going to go back with dot-1 chord.

Audio 1:

Books.

Jonathan Mosen:

And press enter on books.

Audio 1:

New.

Jonathan Mosen:

Again, we can create new files or folders.

Audio 1:

Fiction.

Jonathan Mosen:

I've created a folder here called Fiction. I should just stop and explain that I did this within File Explorer on my Windows machine. So I went into BRF files, I pressed control shift N, which is the shortcut key to create a new folder, and I created the folders here that you are seeing. So this is how well integrated it is. If I press enter on fiction.

Audio 1:

New. The_Giving_Tree.BRF.

Jonathan Mosen:

That is Shel Silverstein's amazing book The Giving Tree. It's very short, but it's very powerful. If I press dot-4 chord again.

Audio 1:

The_Secret_of_Secrets.BRF.

Jonathan Mosen:

Those titles have come from Bookshare and that's the way that they name the file. So here is Dan Brown's latest book, The Secret of Secrets, which I have yet to start. If you want to make that file name more intelligible, then you do have the rename option right here if you want.

You can go to the context menu by pressing dot-7, choose rename and perhaps take those underscores away, rename it to something that's a little more friendly sounding. And then when I press dot-4 chord.

Audio 1:

Back.

Jonathan Mosen:

We've wrapped around to the back button, so I'll press enter on that.

Audio 1:

Fiction.

Jonathan Mosen:

And then if I press dot-4 chord.

Audio 1:

Florence.

Jonathan Mosen:

This one's called Florence. Florence is my granddaughter. She's going to be three in January, and she just spent two weeks with us here in Baltimore. And she's got enough energy to power the national grid, that I can tell you, but she does like her stories. And what I do is I go into my home studio and I record books for her own listening.

She's got a Yoto Player, and we talked about this on Access On before. And I put sound effects on some of them, that kind of thing. This is where I am now storing the books that I read to Florence. And if we went in here, we would see a lot of kids titles that I still have to read.

Audio 1:

Nonfiction.

Jonathan Mosen:

And then we have nonfiction. If I press enter on that.

Audio 1:

New. The_Let_Them_Theory.BRF.

Jonathan Mosen:

I am actually reading that one at the moment. This is Mel Robbins' book, The Let Them Theory. It is a really good book. And I'm going to press enter to open that one. Remember that enter when you have an existing file will open it in read-only mode. It says loading on the Braille display and now it has come right up and we've got the Bookshare notice at the top of the file. What I can do now is perform an F chord.

Audio 1:

Find.

Jonathan Mosen:

We do have Samantha saying "find" at this point and I can type chapter and seven is where I'm up to, chapter seven in contracted Braille and I will press enter. And I'm there. Chapter seven, When Grownups Throw Tantrums, is the name of the title.

What I'd like to do is put a bookmark at this point because this is where I'm up to. It does remember your place, by the way, when you come back into a BRF file, and we'll cover some of these options shortly. But I'm going to press dot-7. Remember that's the context menu key.

Audio 1:

Find.

Jonathan Mosen:

And find is here as well, in case you don't remember that you can press F chord. I'm going to press dot-4 chord to navigate this context menu.

Audio 1:

Previous find. Add bookmark.

Jonathan Mosen:

And I can press enter and I have now added a bookmark at this point. Let's go back into the context menu.

Audio 1:

Find.

Jonathan Mosen:

And we're back at the top.

Audio 1:

Previous find. Remove bookmark.

Jonathan Mosen:

And we can remove that bookmark that we just created.

Audio 1:

Back. Next bookmark. Previous bookmark. Find.

Jonathan Mosen:

So you'll notice that the bookmark previous and next functions weren't available until we set a bookmark. That is very good. So I'm going to test this, not that I'm skeptical or anything.

Audio 1:

Previous book. Next bookmark. Back.

Jonathan Mosen:

We'll go back. Now I'm in the book, and I'm going to perform a dot-123 chord to get to the top of the file. And here we have the title and the notice to readers. That is typical Bookshare. I'm going to press a dot-7 now.

Audio 1:

Find.

Jonathan Mosen:

And I think if we press dot-1 chord, that's the quickest way to get back to the bookmark functions.

Audio 1:

Previous bookmark. Next bookmark.

Jonathan Mosen:

I'm going to press enter on next bookmark, and right away it is actually on the word tantrums, which is the name of that chapter seven title and exactly where I set the bookmark. So we're back right there and it is very snappy. So that is the BRF function. It is very powerful, and there are some settings pertaining to it which we will come back to shortly as we wrap on the Braille Access mode. I'm going to perform a B chord.

Audio 1:

The_Let_Them.

Jonathan Mosen:

And a B chord again.

Audio 1:

Nonfiction.

Jonathan Mosen:

And B chord again.

Audio 1:

Books.

Jonathan Mosen:

And B chord again.

Audio 1:

BRF Files.

Jonathan Mosen:

And now we're back at the menu. I'm going to perform a dot-4 chord.

Audio 1:

Nemeth Calculator.

Jonathan Mosen:

The calculator is available in the Nemeth Code, which is still widely used in the United States and also in UEB math. If you have the option selected for a visual representation of Braille Access to be shown on the screen, which would be useful for teachers, then if a student is typing in calculations, teachers will be able to see those on the screen. So that is a welcome feature. And the next feature is.

Audio 1:

Live captions.

Jonathan Mosen:

This feature makes live captions truly accessible to people using a Braille display. And as somebody who wears hearing aids and sometimes has to function in difficult acoustical environments or large rooms, it has made a huge difference to the way that I work and can participate.

And I have no doubt that that is the case for other deafblind people as well. There is little that I can demonstrate for you with this, but I can tell you about how this works.

The phone can take input from two sources. It can use any microphone that you specify as the default microphone and you can set that in the sound options now. You can choose what microphone you want to use.

Or you can get from audio that is playing on your phone. So if you are listening to something and you're having some difficulty making out the dialogue, then you can have an instant transcript pop-up on your Braille display.

At this point, I have not been able to make this work on video conference calls or FaceTime and phone calls. I don't know whether that is some sort of technical limitation or whether we may be able to see that arrive in future versions of iOS. Depending on how clearly the person is speaking, how good the acoustics are, sometimes it may mistranslate things, and I do see that from time to time.

But most of the time it's accurate enough for me to understand what's going on. I am fortunate enough to be a very fast Braille reader and usually I can keep up with what's being said in real time.

But for people who aren't able to do that, Apple has thought about that. When you are behind, when you're not in real time, you will see four signs at the beginning and end of the line of captions that you're reading so that you know that the talking is going on ahead of you.

And if you want to catch up to real time, all you have to do is press a cursor routing key and you'll see the current line of transcription. You might want to use this in conjunction with another accessibility feature that Apple has added this year, and that's the ability for the phone to prompt you when your name is mentioned. So I've got this set up so that if somebody says Jonathan or Mosen or Mr. Mosen, it will push me a notification to say, "We think somebody's talking to you."

And if you are behind with the captions, or let's face it, you might have zoned out, especially if you are someone with a non-24, that's absolutely possible, then you can get that notification. The one thing about that is that there sometimes can be a little bit of a delay.

If somebody says, "What do you think about this, Jonathan," it's going to take two or three seconds before it pings and says, "Hey, somebody's just said your name." So just use that with some caution, but it is a very useful feature as well.

So the combination of this very well implemented live captions feature and the name recognition feature can make a big difference. There are a couple of other things that you can do with live captions that are worthy of mention, one of which I can demonstrate for you.

So if I press enter on live captions and it says listening, and actually now that I'm starting to talk, I can read what I'm saying back on the Braille display, which is kind of disconcerting, but it is transcribing this extremely accurately probably because at the moment the iPhone is picking up my Heil PR 40 microphone.

Or it just actually wrote higher instead of Heil. So the microphone is H-E-I-L and it wrote H-I-G-H-E-R, but that's okay. It's an unusual brand name. Now what I can do is press enter.

Audio 1:

Type to speak.

Jonathan Mosen:

And this feature is useful for deafblind people who don't have speech. Because if you're in a situation where you're having a conversation with someone, the deafblind person is able to read what someone's saying on the Braille display. And when they want to reply, they can press enter and type what they want to say. If you've got a personal voice set up, and I have, it will use that. So I'm Brailing now something that I want to say. And I'm nearly done. Okay, I am done, so I'll press enter and my personal voice should speak this.

Audio 2:

Live the life you want. Blindness is not what holds you back.

Jonathan Mosen:

Does that sound like me? I'm not sure whether it sounds like me or not, but that's how that feature works and that is very cool for deafblind people who would like to have that function. The other feature of live transcription, which is very handy when it works, is that you can press the backspace key to get the context key.

Audio 1:

Pause.

Jonathan Mosen:

And you can pause listening.

Audio 1:

Listen to audio.

Jonathan Mosen:

This will switch from the microphone to listening to audio from your phone, and it seems to be sticky. In other words, it remembers from session to session.

Audio 1:

Summarize.

Jonathan Mosen:

I've had mixed luck with this working. I don't know whether there's some sort of limit that bogs this down, but the way that this is supposed to work is that if you choose summarize, Apple Intelligence will go ahead and summarize the conversation or the meeting or whatever it is for you.

And that can be a very handy feature, particularly if your Braille skills mean that you're not able to keep up in real time and you would like some sort of summary of everything that went on. To give you an example of this, let's see if we can generate a summary of what this thing has heard since we started using the live captions.

Audio 1:

Listening and transcribing accurately. Dish not what she makes. Backspace key useful.

Jonathan Mosen:

And that's the summary. And the final option that we have on the Braille Access menu.

Audio 1:

Nine hours, 57 minutes, and 27 seconds AM.

Jonathan Mosen:

And I'm seeing the time ticking over on my Braille display. Remember I can take the phone somewhere else. So if I want to monitor the time while I'm doing something, this is a very handy way of doing that.

And those are the options available on the Braille Access menu. Let's have a look at some of the customization options available for this feature. To do that, we're going to accessibility, voiceover, Braille, Braille Access, and let's navigate through the options.

Audio 1:

Braille Access. Heading. Quickly access Braille Notes, BRF files and more using a Braille display. Press dot-7 and 8 together or with space one using an 8-dot table or use a toggle Braille Access command on your keyboard to start Braille Access.

Jonathan Mosen:

We'll come back to that latter point about using a keyboard for those using Braille displays with QWERTY input.

Audio 1:

Learn more.

Jonathan Mosen:

If you go into learn more, you'll get a brief primer on this feature that we've just been showing you.

Audio 1:

Main menu items. Button.

Jonathan Mosen:

You can customize the main menu items here. If you don't want all of them, then you can hide them and it just speeds up your navigation.

Audio 1:

Open to last position. Switch button on.

Jonathan Mosen:

Most note takers will open to the last position in a file. That's a good feature to have, and I certainly want to leave that on.

Audio 1:

Speak list items. Switch button on.

Jonathan Mosen:

When I am using this regularly, I don't want speak list items on because it's a Braille function. I switch this on for the purposes of this demo, so I'm now going to toggle it off.

Audio 1:

Off. Show visuals. Switch button off.

Jonathan Mosen:

I don't have a need to show visuals of this feature.

Audio 1:

Typing speech feedback. Switch button off. In order to get typing speech feedback, character typing, feedback free hardware keyboards needs to be enabled. Braille Notes button.

Jonathan Mosen:

Let's take a look at what features are available to customize the Braille Notes feature.

Audio 1:

Sort by heading. Selected. Date edited button. Date created button. Sort order. Heading. Selected. Newest first button. Oldest first button.

Jonathan Mosen:

Those are the options. Let's back out of here.

Audio 1:

Braille Notes button.

Jonathan Mosen:

And there is a similar set of options for.

Audio 1:

BRF files button.

Jonathan Mosen:

So we'll take a look in there.

Audio 1:

Fit BRF content to display. Switch button on. Hide BRF page indicators. Switch button on.

Jonathan Mosen:

I just find that speeds up my reading flow, so I personally choose to hide BRF pages.

Audio 1:

BRF files. Calculator button.

Jonathan Mosen:

The only option for the calculator if we go in here is to choose the type of Braille that you use in the calculator, and it can either be Nemeth or UEB Math.

Audio 1:

Live captions button.

Jonathan Mosen:

The only option available here is to let you choose the source that the captions are coming from. That can be the microphone or it could be your iPhone audio. And remember you can press dot-7 for the context menu and change that anytime you like.

Let's talk briefly about how you can use Braille Access mode if you have a Braille display with a QWERTY keyboard such as the Mantis Q40 and Orbit also have a Q20 and Q40 display.

They have QWERTY keyboards as well. Apple's introduced Braille keyboard input mode for QWERTY keyboards and you can use FDS for dots-123 and JKL for dots-456. A becomes dot-7 and semicolon becomes dot-8. How you get to it seems to vary a little bit.

For many people, VO with Y seems to have become the keyboard command to use to invoke this mode, but it doesn't seem to be consistent.

I have seen some installations where VOY has not been assigned the Braille input function. So you can try VO with Y. And if you don't have it, well, you can set it up. You set it up by going to settings, accessibility, voiceover, commands, keyboard shortcuts. I'm on that screen now and I'm going to perform a VO with F for find.

Audio 1:

Enter search text.

Jonathan Mosen:

And I'm going to type Braille and press enter.

Audio 1:

Toggle Braille Access. B.

Jonathan Mosen:

There is a function that will get you straight into Braille Access. So if you have a QWERTY keyboard on your Braille display and you know you're not going to use Braille outside of Braille Access, you may want to do this instead.

And I've got VO with B assigned to Braille Access. It did have a function before I changed it and I don't recall what that function is, but I know I didn't use it very often and I'm using Braille Access a lot.

So now on my Mantis I can press VO with B and we'll get into Braille Access. However, if you want Braille keyboard in other parts of the system, you can press VO with G now that we've searched for Braille once and VO with G will repeat the find.

Audio 1:

Toggle Braille keyboard input. Y.

Jonathan Mosen:

That confirms that toggle Braille keyboard input is set to VO with Y. And now once we press VO with Y, we'll be able to Braille anywhere when voiceover is running even outside of Braille Access mode. This Braille Access is very thorough and well thought through.

And the final thing I will mention about this feature is that if you want to bypass the menu entirely, for example, if you, like me, use live captions regularly and you use the BRF feature regularly, they are the two that I use the most, you can assign commands to get specifically there without having to go to the menu.

To do this, you will go to settings, accessibility, voiceover, Braille, then choose your Braille display located and choose more options, and you'll find the commands for your Braille display. The first set of commands for your Braille display is called Braille.

And when you choose that, you can assign commands to the following Braille Access functions: open Braille Access to Braille Notes, open Braille Access to BRF files, open Braille Access to calculator, open Braille Access to choose item, open Braille Access to launch app, open Braille Access to live captions, open Braille Access to time.

So you can actually assign a function that will display the time on your Braille display. Braille Access is a very comprehensive first start at note-taking functionality, and I hope that this is just the start and that we'll see expansion of this functionality over time.

There are quite a few Braille related features in iOS 26 that are new, but I will just focus on one more and this is called item overview.

This allows you to get a quick glance, if you will, of a very busy screen, and it can be handy. One useful example of this is Mona for iOS. This is the Mastodon client, and of course, you can follow [email protected] for technology related things from the National Federation of the Blind.

You can also follow [email protected] for President Riccobono's posts, and the main National Federation of the Blind's account is @[email protected].

On the bottom of the MonaClient, there is a long tab strip, at least it's long for me because I have so many features set up, and there's no way that it would fit on a Braille display, even an 80-cell Braille display.

So I've got focus on that tab control now, and I can go into the item overview mode by pressing dot-678 together. And now I'm seeing a whole bunch of items on the Braille display with the first three characters of each item represented.

It's a really great way to see all the options there. And when I find the one I want, I can press a cursor routing key and it puts focus on that particular item. Now let's have a look at another big accessibility win in iOS 26 for voiceover users.

One of the features that many of us use a lot is the three finger quadruple tap, which copies the last thing that voiceover said to the clipboard.

That's handy, but sometimes many of us have found ourselves in a position where we might be trying to put a document together, standard text selection isn't available, or maybe this gesture is just easier to do.

But you have to rinse and repeat, right? You have to perform a three finger quadruple tap, go to the place you want to paste that output, paste it in, go back, do another three finger quadruple tap, and on and on it goes.

But not anymore with iOS 26 because there is this little rotor option that's now come up that remembers the last 10 things that you copied to the clipboard using this method. It doesn't work with any other text selection and copying to the clipboard method.

This is specifically about speech history, if you will, the last 10 things that voiceover said that you copied to the clipboard. To show you how this might be useful, I'm on the App Store app and I'm in my list of updates.

For accessibility reasons, I do not have automatic updates enabled. Because if somebody warns me about an update that I use regularly that I haven't updated yet, I want to reserve the right not to update a specific app.

And that is something I highly recommend. Because if an app gets updated and they say, "Well, we've rewritten this app and it's absolutely marvelous," but it's absolutely inaccessible, that can be a huge pain.

So I have about 42 updates since I last looked, and I'm going through those now. And let's say I want to compile a list of apps that have been updated recently to send to somebody. So what I'd like to do is copy the names and details to the clipboard and then paste them into drafts. I'll flick right.

Audio 1:

ABC News.

Jonathan Mosen:

That one's interesting. So I will perform a three finger quadruple tap.

Audio 1:

ABC News. Today. Version nine.

Jonathan Mosen:

There we go. It's copied that to the clipboard with some other stuff.

Audio 1:

Update button. Bug fixes and small. ABC iview. TV and movies.

Jonathan Mosen:

That's an Australian app. I will copy that to the clipboard as well.

Audio 1:

ABC iview.

Jonathan Mosen:

And keep flicking right.

Audio 1:

Update. We've made some improvements. Air Canada Plus Aeroplane.

Jonathan Mosen:

Yeah, I've got a lot of apps. This is Air Canada. We'll do that one.

Audio 1:

Air Canada Plus.

Jonathan Mosen:

We've got three. We'll do a couple more.

Audio 1:

Bullet. Upgraded Apple Wallet, Amazon Kindle today. Version Seven. Amazon.

Jonathan Mosen:

Copy that one and one more.

Audio 1:

Update several bug fixes and improvements. Calm today.

Jonathan Mosen:

Ah, the Calm app.

Audio 1:

Calm today. Version Six.

Jonathan Mosen:

I'm going to go to my home screen.

Audio 1:

App Store.

Jonathan Mosen:

Open drafts.

Audio 1:

Drafts. Drafts. Text field is editing insertion point at start.

Jonathan Mosen:

And this wonderful app puts me straight in an edit field where I could start to type. I'm going to use the rotor to get to where I need to be. I'm going counterclockwise.

Audio 1:

Misspelled words. Edit. Copied speech. Calm today. Version 6.80. Bullet 144.5 MB.

Jonathan Mosen:

The copied speech rotor works with the most recent item first, which is often what you want. And then if you flick down, you will go in reverse chronological order. So I will flick down.

Audio 1:

Amazon Kindle.

Jonathan Mosen:

And now again.

Audio 1:

Air Canada Plus Aeroplane.

Jonathan Mosen:

And again.

Audio 1:

ABC iview. ABC News. Clear all copied speech. Calm.

Jonathan Mosen:

And now we're back up to the top. So I will perform a double tap on Calm.

Audio 1:

Calm today.

Jonathan Mosen:

And now it's pasted it in. I'll go down.

Audio 1:

Amazon Kindle today.

Jonathan Mosen:

And perform a double tap on that.

Audio 1:

Amazon Kindle.

Jonathan Mosen:

Now let's review our draft.

Audio 1:

Add tag. Text field is editing. Calm. Today. Version 6.80. Bullet 144.5 MB. Amazon Kindle. Today. Version 7.42.1. Bullet 160.6 MB. Insertion point at end.

Jonathan Mosen:

And I could keep going and that gives me a list of recently updated apps that I might want to share with someone all by using this feature. And we can store 10 items at a time. It is a very welcome productivity tool specifically for voiceover users from Apple. In other voiceover features, sometimes it's the little things. And the rotor has actually become a big thing over the years.

You can do a lot with the rotor. And some of us like to go through the rotor and decide, do we want this feature on or not? And sometimes we might turn a feature off and miss it.

What you can do now is go into the rotor settings and search for the option that you're looking for. This is just a little productivity enhancer that makes a big difference because there were so many choices to flick through.

Now you can search by keyword and find the rotor choice that you're looking for. The magic tap has also received some love. The magic tap is that two finger double tap that does a lot of things.

That's why it's called the magic tap. It can answer and end calls. It can stop and start the playback of media. And sometimes it can get itself a little bit confused about what magic it should perform at any given time.

You can now go into commands and choose magic tap and prevent it from starting and stopping media if you want to do that. I personally like it starting and stopping media. And I haven't personally had any issue with it doing the wrong thing for quite a long time, but obviously this is a factor for some people.

It would be good if they just kept working on the magic doing what we want the magic to do rather than providing an option like this.

But it is there if you want to invoke it. As you can hear, I'm a voiceover sounds minimalist. When I flick around the screen, I don't need voiceover to go clunk before it says what it needs to say. So I turn a lot of those sounds off.

But if you haven't turned them off, either because you just haven't gotten around to it or you like all those sounds, then you will hear a new one. And this is a sound when you are changing to a different container.

Navigating by containers is a way to quickly get to different parts of the app. You may find this in your voiceover rotor. And when you get used to where the containers are in an app, it can help you to get to where you need to be more efficiently, which is precisely why voiceover has introduced to this new sound because you will get to understand where the different containers are and that will help you with navigation accordingly.

Apple has added a feature I'm sure many people will appreciate when they're troubleshooting. If you are in the voiceover settings, you can perform a full finger single tap on the bottom half of the screen and the very last option is reset voiceover settings. When you perform this function, you'll be asked to confirm and it will reset voiceover back to its defaults without changing any other settings.

Some of us have had to reset our iPhone settings just to get voiceover back to a default state to try and troubleshoot something. So this is certainly a welcomed feature.

The one thing that I wish that voiceover had added at the same time is the ability to back up your settings and then restore them from that backup. Because there are times when you reset voiceover settings and you find that actually that hasn't cured the problem you were trying to fix.

So if you could have your existing voiceover settings saved somewhere as a backup just in case you do the big reset and you find right away that that big reset has not fixed the problem that you were trying to solve, you can restore and recover what you've just deleted, but that's not there yet.

Another great feature in a similar vein is the ability for you to back out of voiceover settings and then go to the bottom of the main accessibility settings screen and you'll find a button there button to share accessibility settings.

This is a very useful feature. Some of us who are pretty techy inclined find especially when this Thanksgiving season is approaching that we are the tech support people for our family. And we find that our family want us to help fix some problem that's been lingering with their iPhone, and we get handed their iPhone and then we have to get voiceover set up just the way we like it so that we can get on with the thing that we've been asked to do.

Now you can share your accessibility settings to another device so that all your preferences relating to voiceover will carry across temporarily and you can do the work that you need to do to get your loved one's device in good shape. Marvelous.

There are several other important voiceover enhancements. And as our time is limited, what I suggest you do is go to settings, accessibility, voiceover, and there is a what's new in voiceover function there that gives you information about some of those other features that we haven't covered.

But I do want to talk about some general features in the time that remains to us. The first thing I'd point out is that Apple has redesigned iOS 26 visually and they have this new look called Liquid Glass, and Kennedy will talk about that from a low vision perspective little bit later. One of the biggest changes that you may note as a voiceover user is that whereas the search features often appeared at the top of apps before, they have been moved to the bottom.

So if you go into an app that was familiar and you think, "Where on earth did the search thing go," it's probably at the bottom of the screen now instead of the top. So the easiest way to find search when you're on a search screen and you know there should be a field there is to perform a four finger single tap on the bottom half of the screen and that will take you to the search field.

For some time, Apple has focused on privacy as a real strength of its ecosystem, and it has had what they've called privacy nutrition labels so that you can learn what an app is collecting about you and how it uses that data. In iOS 26, we're pleased to see that Apple has now added accessibility nutrition labels as an option, and at this stage they are optional.

So Apple is not requiring developers to complete the accessibility nutrition labels in order for an app to appear in the store. We'd like to hope that at some point, accessibility nutrition labels become a requirement in order for apps to make their way into the App Store.

Because for now, while this is a great feature, it's probably those who are already aware of accessibility who are going to complete these.

I mean, it's unlikely that somebody who doesn't care about voiceover support or doesn't know about voiceover support is going to complete this and say, "Sorry, this app's not accessible."

But the fact that nutrition labels are there at all is likely to serve as an awareness raiser for app developers that accessibility is something they should be considering. So that is a good thing.

I've already mentioned Mona for Mastodon, which is a fully accessible client, and the developer has been consistently responsive to blind people since the development of Mona and even before that when he developed Spring for Twitter. So I have the Mona for Mastodon screen up in the App Store right now. And if you navigate by heading, you'll eventually get here.

Audio 1:

Accessibility button heading.

Jonathan Mosen:

And I'm just going to perform a continuous read at this point with a two finger flick down.

Audio 1:

Accessibility button heading. The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features: learn more, supported features, voiceover, larger text, dark interface, sufficient contrast, reduced motion button.

Jonathan Mosen:

Now you hear that that is a button. Let's double tap that button and we can do a deep dive.

Audio 1:

Back button

Jonathan Mosen:

And we'll perform another continuous read.

Audio 1:

Back button. Accessibility heading. The developer Junyu Kuang indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features to help make common tasks in the app faster and easier to complete. Learn more. Voiceover. Navigate and explore the app using gestures, Braille and speech output. Larger text. Increase the text size in the app to 200% or more.

Dark interface. Apply a dark color scheme to the screens, menus, and controls to reduce eye strain. Sufficient contrast. Increase or adjust the contrast between text or iconography and background. Reduced motion. Modify or reduce certain types of animation that may cause motion sickness or discomfort.

Jonathan Mosen:

So that's nutrition labels, and of course, it's important to point out that these are self declarations. So this is the developer saying, "I think that these apps are accessible with these apple accessibility features." If you find that there is an app that says it supports voiceover well and in your experience as a user it actually does not, then you would want to review accordingly in the App Store and say, "Well, the nutrition label says one thing, but my experience says another."

And that's a responsibility that we have as consumers. You may find that things are a little different in the phone app because they have combined what were several tabs into a unified view. If you want to get it back to the way that it was, you can certainly do that. You can go into the new unified view where you'll see voicemail and calls and various other things and double tap on the view option to get back rhe classic view.

Regardless of the view that you choose to use, there's now one really handy feature. Sometimes you look at missed call notifications and you think, I've got to get back to that person, and then life gets in the way and you forget. So if I look at my missed call notifications at the moment.

Audio 1:

Bonnie Mosen. Incoming mobile.

Jonathan Mosen:

Oh boy, there's Bonnie. She's called me. And if I don't call her back, I'm going to be in serious trouble. So I'm going to flick down at this point and that'll invoke the actions rotor.

Audio 1:

More information. Trash. Remind me in one hour. Remind me tonight. Remind me tomorrow. Remind me later.

Jonathan Mosen:

I'm not quite sure what the remind me later does, but if I choose remind me in an hour, maybe I've got a meeting that I'm going into so I can't call Bonnie back right now, then in an hour I will get a notification in my notification center reminding me to call Bonnie back.

That's a very useful feature. While we're on the subject of the phone app, one feature that may save you some time is the fact that Apple can wait on hold for you.

When you call a business and you hear that music start up, you will often hear a notification sound. And if you explore the screen, not the notification center, but actually on the screen, you may find an option to have Apple stay on hold for you while you have a life.

You can double tap that. The call will be put on hold. Apple Intelligence will keep listening for when somebody picks up and is ready to talk to you.

When that happens, your phone will ring, you answer the call, and you'll be able to talk right away to the person who has answered the phone. When I look at feedback around the place, it seems like everybody is praising the call screening features in iOS 26. It automatically handles unknown callers by requiring them to state their name and purpose before your phone rings.

Users see a transcript and decide whether to answer. And of course, that can eliminate those pesky robocall interruptions. Another feature that people love is the live translation integration, which transforms multilingual communication. It provides real-time translation across messages, FaceTime, and phone calls using on-device processing.

So there is no lag here. My wife Bonnie and I have made use of this recently. Our cleaner speaks Spanish primarily. She does speak a little English, but she prefers Spanish.

And we were having a text exchange with her recently, and I said to Bonnie, "You know what we can do? We can switch on this live translation feature. We can type in English and she can type back in Spanish. And when we type in English, she sees what we type as Spanish."

And it was wonderful. It just improved the communication significantly. To do that, you just go into the options for the conversation. You'll find it at the top of every conversation. Usually there's a button with the person's name. You can enable live translation and tell it what you are going to type in and what you want that translated to for the person you're texting with.

You can also specify that this is the language they will type in and you want to receive that translated into English. If for some reason there is one message in a conversation you want to translate, you can triple tap on that specific message in the conversation.

You'll get a little menu that pops up, which also includes text selection, and you can choose to translate that specific message.

In messages, you can now filter unknown senders into a separate folder until you accept them. The benefit is that obviously if you get a lot of spam, this can make your push notifications quieter and your message application less cluttered.

The downside is that there may be somebody legitimate who's not in your contacts trying to contact you and you don't know that until you get around to checking that folder.

So whether you turn that on in messages settings is up to you. One Apple Intelligence feature that Apple introduced in iOS 18 was called Visual Intelligence, and this allowed you to take a picture of something and ask all sorts of questions about it. Blind people have alternatives designed specifically for us, and I suspect that's what most of us have been using the most, things like Be My Eyes and Seeing AI and AccessAI and various other options.

One interesting feature though with Visual Intelligence this year is that it has been extended to screenshots. So you can press the side button and the volume up button together, which will take a screenshot, and then there will be buttons there that allow you to send that screenshot to Visual Intelligence and ask questions. And it is quite context aware. It'll describe pictures.

It might offer to create calendar invitations with the material that it sees. It is an interesting option, but you may still find that using the blindness specific tools is a better option for descriptions, in which case there's a share button there as well and you can share that screenshot to an app that you might typically use for such functions and get a description of what is on your screen.

So that is very useful. I'm generally seeing a little bit more contextual awareness. I was having a text exchange with someone recently who said, "Here's my address," because we were going to pick them up in a right chair vehicle. And after they put their address, and there was a button there that said add this address to the person's contact, and it knew who I was texting with.

All I had to do was double tap and it added the address to the correct contact, which is a huge time saver. If you're in a group chat, then iMessage now supports polls as well.

So it could be something like, where do you want to end up at dinner tonight, and there are a whole bunch of people who can vote on that. When I saw this come out in iOS 26, I thought I can immediately think of where this would have been useful in my own life recently.

I was very honored to have been asked by the performing arts division to be one of the judges in the showcase of talent at National Convention. And boy, there was a lot of talent.

It was very difficult to judge that one because so much of it was so good. And we had three judges. All of us had iPhones, so we could have set up a poll there and voted. That would've been very interesting.

So anyway, there are lots of use cases for that one. And speaking of music, let's have a brief look at a feature in Apple Music called AutoMix. I'm enjoying this feature, and this tries to crossfade tracks DJ style.

It's not a blunt instrument. It's not one of those tools that says start the next song two seconds before the previous one ends. It's making conscious choices about how to blend two songs together.

As far as I can tell, this works in playlists and on radio station type things, but it doesn't work in albums, which is probably what you want. If you've elected to play a complete album from beginning to end, you probably want to hear the album as is. But in a playlist, you just want the music to keep on playing.

So that's a nice little feature in Apple Music. Earlier we talked about personal voice in the context of live captions, which is in Braille Access mode. Personal voice is now a lot easier to set up.

If you're not familiar with this feature, it is a feature that was primarily designed for people who may be losing their ability to speak. For example, if Stephen Hawking had had this feature available to him at the time when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, but he still had the ability to speak, we would remember him very differently because we would've heard all of the things that he had to say, all of the wisdom that he had to impart in his own voice.

It's also useful for people who perhaps can speak at certain times of the day better than other times of the day because of some sort of medical condition if they're in an optimal state where they can record these voice prompts and they can use their voice at any time. In previous versions of iOS, you had to record a lot of phrases. I think it was about a hundred or more phrases to get this to work, and then you had to wait a long time.

The trick was probably to leave the phone plugged in and charging overnight while things crunched away. And your phone may have gotten a little bit hot, and eventually you had the personal voice. And of course, blind people said, "Well, can we have this too? Can we have it working with voiceover?" It's much easier to set up now because you only have to record 10 phrases as opposed to that very large number before, and it's a pretty accessible process to set up.

I suppose the jury's still out as to whether making it a simpler process has necessarily kept the voice as accurate sounding as it was before. I've got one voice that was generated with the old method and one that was generated with the new. So let's compare them and you can decide which one sounds better, which one sounds more like me. We'll start with the one from the last version of iOS.

Audio 2:

Welcome to the movement. Heading level one. We advance the lives of our members and all blind people in the United States. The National Federation of the Blind knows that blindness is not the characteristic that defines you or your future.

Every day we raise the expectations of blind people because low expectations create obstacles between blind people and our dreams. Our collective power, determination, and diversity achieve the aspirations of all blind people.

Jonathan Mosen:

Now, that sounds relatively like me in my view. It's got a slightly broader accent than I have. It sounds a little Australian, but you can tell it's me, I think. I can tell it's me. Let's try the second one, and this one was generated in iOS 26 by just giving it 10 phrases.

Audio 2:

Jonathan Mosen:

In my view, that sounds far less like me than the previous one does, but obviously it took a very short time to create. So sometimes progress is not always a good thing, but that is the new personal voice feature. And I suspect it probably works better with American accent. So we'll have to see. And if you have any feedback about that, I'd be most interested in whether you've tried the new personal voice and whether you find that it's giving you as accurate a depiction of your own voice.

Many people use Apple Maps, of course, and it can now remember all your visited places like restaurants or shops. This is an optional feature. If you enable this, it will list them for you.

And Apple assures us that this is all protected with end-to-end encryption, and it's on your device so Apple can't see it. Maps also uses on-device AI to learn your routine, and it'll suggest preferred routes home or to work.

And plus, it'll alert you of delays or alternative paths. Apple has shown quite a lot of love to Apple Wallet this year. You can now choose to pay with installments or apply rewards when you're using Apple Pay in stores.

And boarding passes have a refreshed look with integrated live activities. In practice, what that means is that the new Wallet Passes show live flight updates and they give quick access to related tools.

For example, if you double tap a boarding pass, it might bring up an airport map or a find my option to track your luggage and baggage claim details. So it's trying to do a lot of the things that apps like Tribit have done for some time. And the final thing I'd like to show you in this iOS 26 overview is how much easier it is now, thankfully, to get ringtones onto the iPhone.

I've been doing ringtones of my own since 2003 when I got a Nokia 6600 smartphone and realized that I could do this with Nokia PC Suite. I really enjoy having ringtones that I've created myself that sound when people who call me regularly call me, because it adds a bit of personality to your phone and it's fun. But Apple has gradually been moving functionality away from iTunes.

And sometime ago, they made a change, which meant that you couldn't use iTunes anymore for ringtone transferal. There were other ways, but for many people it wasn't as easy. Now it's very simple to make your own ringtones and really make your phone your own and we'll demonstrate how to do that.

I thought it would be fun if I could have a ringtone sound when I get a call from the National Federation of the Blind's main number, which as you probably know is 410-659-9314.

And I get quite a few calls from that number on my phone. So what better ringtone to have than a little snippet of that great song by James Brown and The Cane Tips Live the Life You Want. Now, you don't need a large snippet because ringtones loop. So I just wanted a wee riff from the song that would loop around and around when somebody from the NFB's number called me.

So I put Live the Life You Want into REAPER. I trimmed it so that I just have that little riff, and then I saved it as an MP3 file. You can also save it as an M4A file if you want. And it should be under 30 seconds long. Anywhere that the system recognizes that it's playing an audio file, you should be able to find this option in the share sheet.

But what I like to do since I enjoy creating things in REAPER on my computer is I create the file and I put it into a Dropbox folder that I've had for a very long time where I store all my ringtones. Then I use the files app on my iPhone to go into Dropbox, find the file and share it from there. So as it just so happens, I'm in my ringtones folder now, and I'll find this file.

Audio 1:

NFB Audio 9-27-25. 208 kilobytes.

Jonathan Mosen:

That's the one. I'm going to flick down.

Audio 1:

Copy. Move. Share.

Jonathan Mosen:

And double tap share. Now, at the bottom of this window.

Audio 1:

More button.

Jonathan Mosen:

There is a more button. There are a couple of more buttons in here, but it's the bottom one that interests me. I'll double tap.

Audio 1:

More. Copy button.

Jonathan Mosen:

I'm flicking right now.

Audio 1:

New quick mode button. Uses ringtone button.

Jonathan Mosen:

That is the new option that we want, use as ringtone. I'll double tap it.

Audio 1:

Sounds and haptics. Back button.

Jonathan Mosen:

There is one thing you will want to be aware of and that is that it has made this ringtone that you just uploaded to your phone the default ringtone. You may not want that. I mean, you may, but you may want the ringtone to be for a specific contact or group of contacts. In my case, I want to keep my default ringtone, so I'll change it back.

But the ringtone is now there and I can go into my contacts and select this ringtone, which is simply called NFB because I called the file NFB.mp3 and it will now sound. So what does it sound like? It sounds like this. [Ringtone 01:12:52] Not a bad ringtone, is it? And those are some of the things that are new in iOS 26. And before we wrap, let's hear from Kennedy with a few low vision.

Kennedy Zimnik :

IOS 26 brings a shiny new Liquid Glass look to its UI, app icons and widgets, control center tiles and system controls, toolbars, tab bars, and lock screen elements all have this Liquid Glass look to them. It's pretty, but low vision users rightly worry about contrast issues due to the blurry window effect Liquid Glass is based on. I'll show you three quick [fixes] for the contrast and some new features that Jonathan didn't mention.

For any users who are worried about the low contrast that Liquid Glass inherently comes with, these are some settings that you can change in order to increase the contrast. So if you go to your settings, then accessibility and display and text size, there are some options. You should toggle reduce transparency. This improves contrast by reducing transparency and blurs on some backgrounds to increase legibility.

And then increase contrast is another option that should be toggled on. So now increased color contrast between app and foreground background colors is much better. So now that these two features are turned on, you might notice that the backgrounds get solid and the borders pop and text and icons are much easier to see. So if you're a low vision user on iOS 26, I definitely recommend turning on reduced transparency and increased contrast.

Another cool thing that Apple added in iOS 26 is Accessibility Reader. So this gives users a clean high legibility text extracted from whatever text heavy source like an article or a text-based web page into... It's kind of like a book reader format. So it looks like other book reading softwares or OCR software that extracts text. So how you get this is if you go to accessibility in settings again and then go to read and speak, the very first option in here is Accessibility Reader and you want to turn this on.

So once Accessibility Reader is toggled on, you want to go to a heavy text-based thing like an article, for example, or a website that has a lot of text on it. I have an LA Times article open right now. So in order to get the Accessibility Reader to show up, you triple tap on the side button, which is usually how you get to voiceover. Now I have an Accessibility shortcuts menu up. I'm going to hit Accessibility Reader, and now it brings me to a separate window.

Actually, I don't know if it's a separate app, but it looks like a separate app that you can switch between. So if I were to do without voiceover on a single swipe up from the bottom, I could switch between Safari and this Accessibility Reader. Now, this is really cool because it just gives you the extracted text on a neutral background and you can customize anything you want about the text in the background right in the Accessibility Reader.

So this gives anybody the option to get a really clean and high legibility text from any piece of text on your phone, which is very cool. Some of the customizable options, you can have dark mode, balanced, which balances all the text, loose, which increases the space between the text book, which kind of makes it looks like a Kindle book reader, bold makes the text bold, and then light makes the text and the background light.

There's also text to speech. So a play button pops up at the bottom of this Accessibility Reader. You can play it and the text is read out. Something else that I wanted to mention is per app text size, for example. So in your Accessibility settings, you can do per app settings. So if you have a specific app that you only want these text settings to be on, then you can add...

You go to per app settings in accessibility settings. It's all the way at the bottom. It's in the general section of accessibility settings. You go to per app settings, and then you can add app. And then you can change anything you want about the display and text size, reduce transparency, increase contrast, et cetera. So if you have specific apps that you only want these accessibility features on, then you can do that.

Something else that I wanted to mention is wallpapers and the customization you can have on wallpapers. So for low vision users, I recommend having a neutral color background, a darker or lighter color background. And then you can also change the way everything looks on your home screen. So without voiceover on, if I just press and hold on the screen, all your different lock screens will pop up.

You can switch between them. At the bottom of the screen though, there is a customize option. Once you click customize, rectangles are drawn around each element on the screen. I'm interested in the clock. The time right now it's at the top of the screen. If I press and hold that, you can change the font of the text of the numbers. You can change the color.

You can change the size, and you can change between glass and solid. So glass is this transparent look. Might not be the best for everybody. Solid is exactly what it sounds like. It's solid color. So these are some of the low-vision features. Definitely check out that Accessibility Reader. I think it's really cool. And again, if you want to increase the contrast and reduce transparency, that's an easy way to get rid of any contrast issues that might come with iOS 26.

Jonathan Mosen:

Thanks very much, Kennedy. We'd certainly be interested in any feedback that you have about iOS 26. How is it working out for you? I should mention that there were some people who were experiencing a critical bug, which was that iOS 26 was causing loss of speech after the installation. That has been addressed with iOS 26.0.1, which is now available. So if you heard about this bug and you were understandably reluctant to upgrade until that bug was addressed, it has been addressed apparently in the latest version of iOS.

You can be in touch, [email protected]. You can attach an audio clip to that email or write it down. If you're coming in from a National Federation of the Blind chapter, be sure to let us know which one. That concludes this episode of Access On, the Technology Podcast of the National Federation of the Blind. To send in for a future episode, email us, attach an audio clip or just write it down and send it to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. To keep up to date with Access On, follow us on Mastodon, [email protected].

That's [email protected] on Mastodon. To subscribe to an announcement only email list about upcoming episodes, send a blank message to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. To learn more about the National Federation of the Blind, visit our website, nfb.org, or phone us, 410-659-9314. That's 410-659-9314. And be sure to check out the Nation's Blind Podcast right from where you heard this podcast.

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