Hello,
I have seen comments/complaints about the inaccessibility of musical equipment around the web for years. I am a blind Blues guitarist and I have been looking for a multi-effects unit for almost 25 years. Although it would be nice if the units themselves were accessible, it is not necesary. Since almost every multi-effects unit today provides a software editor that runs on MacOS, Windows, IOS, and Android it would be sufficient for these editor apps to be themselves accessible. Since Apple, Google and Microsoft have already done the "heavy lift" in terms of providing the text-to-speech engines and voices to go along with them, it is only necessary for the app developers to make use of these screen reader technologies. These editors are provided free of charge. They are only useful if you purchase the musical equipment, so they make this softwre readily available. It makes sense. But a key value of IOS is being disrupted. I remember when I played with an iPhone 8 for the first time. I took it home on Friday and by Monday you could not have pried it out of my cold dead hands. IOS accessibility was and is absolutely phenomenal! So to my question... Is there any way for Apple to reject apps on the App Store that are not screen reader accessible? I do not suggest this for all apps. Sure, that would be nice. But apps that are specifically designed to manage hardware devices would be excellent candidates. For example, the Alexa app used to manage my Echo and Dot devices would be a major disappointment. Thankfully, the app is accessible, so no problem. But I have yet to find one app from 15 different multi-effects companies that are screen-reader accessible. Line 6 is in a major announcement cycle for their Helix Stadium product which is supposed to ship this Fall (2025). They have never released an accessible editor in 10 years of the Helix product line. Us blind guys keep begging them to fix their editor apps, but They don't listen. No harm, no foulm, right? Hey Apple, what if you changed the rules and added some teeth to the app requirements? Make these developers meet your high-quality accessibility standards going forward. I wonder what Line 6 would think if their app for the Helix Stadium was rejected due to lack of screen reader support. It just occurred to me that if Apple were able to reject inaccessible apps, I'd probably be interested in adding an iPad to my environment. Thoughts?
By David Richards, 28 June, 2025
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
Hi. You may be interested…
Hi.
You may be interested to know that iOS 26 will be introducing accessibility nutrition labels to the app store. Just like privacy nutrition labels, this will, at least initially, encourage developers to stipulate which, if any, accessibility features are supported, to give us users an informed choice on whether to download the app or not, based on its accessibility. While this will be voluntary at first, there are talks it will be manditory in the coming months.
Hope you find this useful.
PS. the above information is in the public domain.