What’s New in iOS 26 Accessibility

In this episode, Thomas Domville (AnonyMouse) dives deep into the exciting new accessibility features in iOS 26. From improved VoiceOver experiences to powerful tools for customization and ease of use, this update offers meaningful improvements for blind, low-vision, and accessibility-focused users.

Whether you’re a long-time VoiceOver user or just curious about Apple’s accessibility innovations, this episode guides you through the highlights with real examples, demonstrations, and practical insights.

Key Highlights

1. New VoiceOver Tone for Touch Containers A subtle sound now plays when entering a new container, making navigation clearer without extra speech.

2. Copied Speech Rotor Option A three-finger quadruple-tap saves text to a clipboard history, accessible via the rotor for quick pasting.

3. Accessibility Nutrition Labels on the App Store Developers can now declare supported accessibility features (VoiceOver, Captions, Larger Text, etc.) directly on app pages.

4. Customizable Magic Tap Gesture Prevent media from accidentally playing when ending a call by disabling Magic Tap’s default play/pause function.

5. Custom Labels Management See and manage all custom labels you’ve created in one place under VoiceOver > Verbosity.

6. Always Use Siri Sounds Replace VoiceOver’s audio tones with Siri’s system sounds for a more familiar experience.

7. Reset VoiceOver Settings Easily A new reset option restores VoiceOver to factory defaults without affecting other system settings.

8. Share Accessibility Settings Between Devices Transfer or sync your preferences seamlessly across iPhone, iPad, or other Apple devices.

9. Reduce Transparency for a Cleaner Look Turn off translucent “liquid glass” UI elements for a more legible and distraction-free display.

10. Expanded Background Sounds Library New sounds include airplane cabin noise, rain, night ambiance, and crackling fire for relaxation or focus.

11. Faster Personal Voice Creation Create a natural-sounding personal voice with just 10 phrases instead of 100—done in minutes.

12. Name Recognition Improve clarity with personalized pronunciation for names in contacts, photos, and text.

13. Accessible Reader A new clutter-free reading view with customizable layout, font, and background options.

14. New Live Listen Features Pair Live Listen with captions and rewind missed audio for more flexible conversations.

15. Head Tracking Use subtle head movements to control audio, highlight menus, or enhance spatial listening.

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This episode is perfect for anyone eager to explore iOS 26’s most impactful accessibility features. Tune in to discover how Apple continues to lead in inclusive design.

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Thomas: Hello and welcome. My name is Thomas Domville, also known as AnonyMouse. At last, iOS 26 is now available for the public, and this is what you will be able to find within the new iOS 26 when it comes to accessibility. Lots of great features in this wonderful iOS 26 that I have taken advantage, and I think you will love them as well. So I'm going to cover some of the new accessibility in iOS 26, and there are a lot more that I don't discuss within this podcast for you to explore and find on your own. So, without further ado, let's dive right in.

Thomas: When you install iOS 26 for the first time and you start to play around on the home screen and such, you're going to notice something. You're going to say, hey, I think that's a new tone. Yep, it's not just you. It's not your ears playing tricks on you. There is a new voiceover tone. It's very subtle, and you've got to listen for it and practice. But once you get to hear it for the first time, you're going to hear it a lot more often. So what is this sound? It is a tone that you will hear any time you navigate into a touch containers. Yes, yes, yes, I know. Containers is something that Apple has been pushing for many years now, and you will find that in various of their own apps, of course, like the weather that is just notoriously known for different types of containers. They're kind of replacing headings with containers to kind of make things more flow easily for those that are visually and sighted people. Now for us that are visually impaired, it can get kind of annoying, but there is a rotor gesture you can set to container to go from one container to the next. But the point is, is that each time you go into a new container area, you get this little tone. So what does that tone sound like? Let me introduce you to the new tone.

VoiceOver: Mail. No unread emails.

Thomas: Did you hear that little tone? Let me try one more time. If I touch in the dock area, that's another container area.

VoiceOver: Dock. Phone.

Thomas: Yep, you heard that. Just that very subtle thing. So if you want to hear a little bit better, just turn off your speech here. So I'll do a three-finger double tap.

VoiceOver: Speech off.

Thomas: And touch into a new container area. And you heard that new little tone. So that is a new voiceover tone. And when you are navigating into a touch container. Now, some of you are probably asking, can I turn that off? You certainly can. Just simply by going to settings, accessibility, voiceover, and find the audio, voiceover sound, and haptic. Double tap that and look for navigating to the touch container, which you can turn on or off.

Thomas: We now have a new rotor option called copy speech. What is this little feature? I love this new feature, and I'm so glad that they introduced this to voiceover users out there. So you know that when we copy things, we copy paste it into the clipboard, right? Well, the bad thing in the old iOS, you can only cut and paste one thing into the clipboard and paste it one at a time, right? Well, wouldn't it be great if you're able to retain a number of things? Items that you copied to the clipboard, well, you can do that now with the copy speech. So essentially what that is, is kind of like a clipboard history. That way you remember the last 10 items that you copied to the clipboard, and that way you can access it easily from the rotor to the copy speech. So let me show you how this has worked. So let's grab a couple items I want to copy. So let's go to my article here, and let's see here.

VoiceOver: Winnie the Pooh and Halloween Countdown Pins, now available at Disney World and online. So let's just say I want to copy that.

Thomas: So how do you initiate the copy? Well, that's a great question. So you do a three fingers quadruple tap. Yes, there is a finger fall there.

VoiceOver: Okay, so I copied that. Now let's go to another item. Let's copy one more item.

VoiceOver: Here's why you should visit before it's too late. Inside the Magic today at 10. 58 a.m. Disney's Animal Kingdom.

Thomas: Now let's copy that.

VoiceOver: Cali River Rapids to close at Disney. Here's why you should visit before it's too late. Inside the magic today at 10, 58 a.m. Disney's.

Thomas: So now that is copied. So what we do from here, now I have a couple items I've copied into the clipboard. We need to go into any field that is a text field. So that could be your messages or your mail, whatever that might be that you want to do the pasting to. So I'll go ahead and compose a mail here.

VoiceOver: Settings, mail, active. Messages, toolbar, compose.

Thomas: And now that I'm in the text field, as you do a counterclockwise for your rotor gesture... You get the usual misspelling.

VoiceOver: Edit. Edit. And now let's do it one more time. Here's why you should visit before it's too late.

Thomas: Inside the magic today at 10.

VoiceOver: 58 a.m. Disney's.

Thomas: So there is your copy speech. Now, the first item you hear is the very last item I pasted to the clipboard. Now, if you want to see the previous item that I pasted to the clipboard, you just swipe down from the copy speech. And what's the beautiful part is that you find the one that you want to paste, right? So I want to paste that. Just do one finger double tap on that particular item. And that particular clip on the clipboard gets pasted on to the text field. So it will retain the last 10 items that you copied to the clipboard.

Thomas: And the only caveat in the Cache 22 that I've noticed is that typically I will go to the edit and then swipe down to do a copy. That item will not work. So it only seems to be working just with a three-finger quadruple tap gesture. That will work. So anytime you copy it via that method, it will send it to the clipboard.

Thomas: Another item that is going to be quite useful as soon as more and more developers take advantage of this now, when an app store, that's where you go and download your various apps or you're searching for different apps that you might be interested in and being able to download. Well, I'll tell you what. So if you go to the app store now. find a particular app that you might have interest in, double-tap that, and it opens it up. And that is where you will find the description, the ratings, and all sorts of things, and that's how you get the particular app. Well, there is a new, what we call, accessibility nutritional label.

Thomas: I know, that's a mouthful. This is a new field that they've added to each of the apps itself that the developers can partake in letting you know what item is acceptable for that app. Now, early on days, there are going to be a lot that probably won't take advantage of it. But nonetheless, it is there right in front of it. So every time they submit an app to the App Store for themselves, they will see this field and they can fill out the field if they want. But for now, if they don't partake in that,

Thomas: You will find accessibility heading, and I'll just say that developers have not made any option changes. However, let's just say weather gods here. So if I'm just going through the app itself and going through what's interesting here.

VoiceOver: Ratings and reviews. Button heading. App privacy. Button heading.

Thomas: Those are all the different labels that they have in the App Store apps. Now, check this out.

VoiceOver: Accessibility. Button heading.

Thomas: Yep. Now you have accessibility because WeatherGaz is a great app and it's very accessible. This particular developer has taken the time and filled this option out. So if it is filled out, what does it sound like? Here's an example.

VoiceOver: The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features. Learn more. Link. Supported features. Voice over. Larger text. Dark interface. Differentiate without color alone. Sufficient contrast. Button.

Thomas: This is simply going to be amazing as more and more developers take advantage of it and take the time to fill this out. So we will now have the ability to see if that particular app is accessible and has been filled out by the developer and what we can expect in this app. And so you heard the following items that were accessible for this following app. So that is called the Accessibility Nutritional Label. Now, there are a few out there that might like this particular feature.

Thomas: So if you are one of those people that are on a phone call and you just simply do a hang up with a two-finger double tap, which is what we call the magic tap, sometimes it can be very frustrating. And you notice that when you do that, you hang up, but then your media starts to play. And it's like, oh, how annoying is that? It doesn't always happen sometimes. all the time, but for those that do have it happen quite a bit, it gets very annoying. Well, I got some great news.

Thomas: So now within the settings, accessibility, voiceover, commands. You now have something called the magic tap settings that you can toggle on and off. So let's dive in here.

VoiceOver: So what you want to do is just turn that option off.

Thomas: And now when you hang up the phone, you won't get that media to play again. So this could be great for those that experience this problem quite a bit. Just come on here, turn it off. Otherwise, it's on by default and you can experiment with this new feature. Now, for a lot of years now, we have had the great experience of being able to rename a label that is either unknown or unlabeled, and maybe it's labeled a little differently than we want.

Thomas: So you know how to recustomize those labels. But what they have introduced in this new iOS 26... is that now in the settings, accessibility, voiceover, down to verbosity, you now have the new area. Custom labels. One. Button. Custom label. It will define a number there. So in this case, I have one area where I have renamed a button at some point and in some form. So if you double tap here.

VoiceOver: Custom labels. Heading.

Thomas: You will now have a list of all the labels and places that you have made those changes. So let's take a look at this. One label that I've changed.

VoiceOver: Past. Eleven Labs, button.

Thomas: I have changed a button to pass. So that is the name of the label that I created. And it tells you what app that it was found in. So Eleven Labs, that is correct. So now you have a nice long list of all the labels you have changed. And it'll tell you what you changed to what name and what app that it was found in. And if for any reason you feel like, I just want to delete all these labels. I don't really use those anymore. Well, have no fear. Just swipe down.

Thomas: Do a one-figure dot tab, and you will delete that label once and for all. Have you ever find that you're asking Siri for certain questions and then sometimes she gets what you're saying, sometimes you don't, right? Well, that might be because you are kind of talking too soon and she's not quite ready for you. So you never know when she's ready. So sometimes you might have some connection issues and might delay things. So if you find yourself in that boat, well,

Thomas: here is a great new option to take advantage of. And so this is within settings, accessibility, voiceover, audio.

VoiceOver: Always use Siri sounds. Switch button on. Double tap to toggle settings. Siri will always play a sound when it starts to listen. Otherwise... It will use the default behavior.

Thomas: Pretty self-explanatory, so it's born by default. And so when you initiate Siri, you will hear a little tone to let you know that she is now listening for you. If you don't like that tone, obviously you can just do a one-finger-double-tap and toggle that to off if you find that's something that you would like to do. But in my case, I like to keep that on so now I know she is ready to listen until I can implement my mind command to Siri.

Thomas: From time to time, you may want to just kind of reset voiceover settings. What? Yeah, you were never able to do that before, but now you can do that because before we had to do a reset of all the settings, which is really annoying. I just want to get back to the factory default that I had for my voiceover. So if for some reason you guys all messed up or you just want to start over from scratch, and I just want to reset just my voiceover settings, you can do that now.

Thomas: So you just head over to Settings, go to Accessibility, go to VoiceOver, and at the very bottom, you can now reset your VoiceOver settings. Just double-tap that, follow the commands, and then you'll be able to, voila, reset everything back to factory default. So you can start from scratch. Do you have multiple devices? Say you have an iPad along with your iPhone.

Thomas: Would you love being able to kind of just be able to share your voiceover setting from one device to the next? Well, you can do that now with iOS 26. So if you head over to Settings, Accessibility, down at the very bottom of Accessibility, you have the option to share those settings. Now, there's two options in here, so let's go dive in here and show you what the two options are.

VoiceOver: Share Accessibility Settings. Button Temporarily Transfer Accessibility Settings to Another Device. Your settings will be available while using a borrowed or public device, such as a friend's device or a kiosk, and be removed when you are done using the other device.

Thomas: So this is a great way of being able to borrow somebody's device, say you want to do some work on it, but you prefer to have your voiceover settings go over there automatically or temporarily. You can do that now. So at that very first button there, if you double tap that, It'll set you through commands and where you read the online prompt there. And you'll kind of put two phones together closely. And then you'll transfer your voiceover setting to the other device that you want to use temporarily to make changes or whatever you need on that device automatically.

Thomas: Now, the second option that I mentioned here.

VoiceOver: Sync to iCloud. Switch button on. Double tap to toggle setting. When enabled, settings from this device will sync to other devices signed into your Apple account. and will be available when sharing accessibility settings from those devices.

Thomas: It has allowed you to transfer your settings over the cloud. So in other words, if I had an iPad, as I mentioned before, and I have an iPhone, so if I change the voice on my iPhone, it will change that voice over to iPad. So any changes you make to voiceover settings will then transfer over to that new device and make that changes on the fly because it's grabbing it from the cloud, making things much easier to without having to change in all the devices you have. Now, obviously, you want to turn that off.

Thomas: If that's something that annoys you and you like the settings the way it is on the other device, you want to come in here and make sure that's turned off. Now, for those that are low vision out there, you probably have word and anxious to see what this new liquid glass looks like. Yeah, it is one of those new features that you're going to love or hate. And I can imagine with a lot of low vision people out there may not going to like this new liquid glass.

Thomas: So essentially what Apple's done is they made the interface a little more fancy or more eye candy for those with sighted. That allows you to have transparency through all the different elements and items and buttons and things like that you will find across a different part of the new iOS 26. Well, have no fear. There is an option for you if you find that annoying or get to the part where it's not helping you, it's more distracting. I want to be able to reduce this liquid glass special effect.

Thomas: So without further ado, just go to settings, accessibility, go to display and text size, and you will now find the following item.

VoiceOver: Reduce transparency. Switch button off. Double tap to toggle setting. Improve contrast by reducing transparency and blurs on some backgrounds to increase legibility.

Thomas: So if liquid glass is annoying and you don't like that, can I reduce it? Yes, you can. So go right there and turn that and toggle that on to on and that'll reduce the transparency for you and hopefully give you a better visibility so you'll be able to see what's on the screen.

Thomas: Background noise is something that we have had in previous iOS. Well, within iOS 26, we now have some more noises that you can select from. Background noise is for those that need just a little bit of background noise that helps you focus and concentrate on things that matters to you.

VoiceOver: We now have something called rain. This is actually the rain sound on top of a tin roof. On.

VoiceOver: Off.

Thomas: So there's your rain. We also have... Night. Night for nighttime sounds.

VoiceOver: On.

VoiceOver: Off.

Thomas: Or maybe you like a nice fireplace sound crackling with the wood popping in your fireplace.

VoiceOver: Fire. On.

VoiceOver: Off.

Thomas: And the last one they introduced in the background noise is?

VoiceOver: Airplane.

Thomas: Airplane. So airplane background noise.

VoiceOver: On.

VoiceOver: Off.

Thomas: So those are the new various background noise you can select on to help you focus and concentrate. In the previous iOS, we were now able to use your personal voice as a voiceover voice, which was great if you like to hear yourself anyway. But one of the things that made personal voice kind of annoying and frustrating for me was it took forever to create your own personal voice. And if you ever tried it, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Thomas: There's like 100 prompts that you have to go through. They give you all sorts of different things you have to read out. And it took forever. It could take up to 45 minutes to up to an hour. It just depends how quick you were to be able to read off the prompt. So it can duplicate and make your personal voice of your voice so you can use it for a voiceover voice. Now, in the new iOS 2016, When you go to Settings, Accessibility, down to Personal Voice, double-tap that, you will now see that, oh my gosh, they made this so much simpler for you.

Thomas: Instead of 100 prompts and taking forever, it now only requires 10 prompts for you to replicate and get your own personal voice. For those that are deafblind or possibly just hard of hearing, you're having a hard time hearing things. So in the previous iOS, we were able to recognize different sounds like doorbells, fire alarms, and things like that. Now they have introduced two name recognitions. So if somebody's calling out a particular name, you'll be able to be recognized.

Thomas: alerted that somebody is calling that name. So if you go under settings, accessibility, go down to sounds and name recognition.

VoiceOver: Name recognition off button.

Thomas: You will there find the name recognition, double tap that, follow the prompts and the onboard screen to get your name recognition set up and you'll be alerted when that name gets called out. We now have a new feature called Accessible Reader. Now, this isn't so specifically for voiceover users, but it can really be taken advantage for all of us that use accessibility in one form or another.

Thomas: So if you have ever used the Safari and you've gone to a page and then you use the reader mode, if you are familiar with that, you know that it strips out all the nonsense clicks and links and all that to make it in a much easier, legible way to read things. Well, there is a new thing called Accessible Reader.

Thomas: And to activate this, what you need to do is you need to go to Settings, Accessibility, and go to the Read and Speak, and then within this area, Accessibility Reader, on, button, read or listen to text in a full screen view, and customize fonts, layout, and background colors, which you can now turn on if you'd like to take advantage of this. Now, for those voiceover users, What I like about this is that within the control center, you can access this instead of doing the three-finger tap on the right side to activate the voiceover or the accessible reader.

Thomas: So essentially what this does, it will take any place that has a place, whether there's an app of any kind or possibly in Safari, you just don't want to use a reader mode, you want to access it in a quicker way. That is an element you can add to the control center called accessible reader. That's how I activate it. So let's take this in action, see what this does and why I like this particular feature. So I have this particular item up. I'm in Leary, which is a great place to use it if you like.

VoiceOver: All the films and TV shows announced by Disney for 2026, 2027, and 2028. Link.

Thomas: And then from here, I'll go to my Control Center, find Accessible Reader, double tap.

VoiceOver: Control Center. Accessibility Reader. Off. Button. Double tap and hold to expand. Actions available.

Thomas: Which I'll do one bigger double tap.

VoiceOver: Accessibility reader. Image. A black icon with white text on it. All the films and TV shows announced by Disney for 2026, 2027, and 2028.

Thomas: Now, in here, you have different various ways of how to take advantage of this. So now, it's in a nice readable form without all the links and whatever not.

VoiceOver: Now, at the very bottom here, at the very bottom right is your speaking rate.

Thomas: So, yes, you can have this read to you. So, set your speaking rate. So, in my case, it's 1.25. So, if I go left here, double-tap play.

VoiceOver: Pause. Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025, at 11.09 a.m., all the films and TV shows announced by Disney for 2026, 2027, and 2028. Ryan DelPazzo, semicolon, all years net. Disney's release schedule for the next few years just came into clearer focus. Copyright Disney during the 2025 destination.

Thomas: I'll give it a pause here. And that is how Accessibility Reader works. And if that's something you want to turn on, now you know how to do that. And hopefully that'll make your reading experience that much better. Live listening was a new feature that came out last year in iOS or just need a little bit extra help for those that are hard of hearing to be able to hear what's around you. So live listen now has a new feature in iOS 26 that allows you to pair that up with live captions.

Thomas: So you'll have captions along with the live listening. Plus, if you kind of didn't get what they just said, you can hit the rewind button to rewind it a little bit, and then you'll be able to re-hear what was announced for it. So you can see what was said by using that new rewind area. To find this new feature, just go over to Settings, Accessibility, Go to audio and visual. Live listen button.

Thomas: And go to the live listen button and then follow the prompt from there to be able to take advantage of the new features for pairing with a live caption with the option of rewinding what was just spoken. Now, last year we got eye tracking. Now, I realize this isn't for voiceover users out there, but I find this really cool because I've got a couple of clients that could probably take advantage of this new, new feature. And what is that? It's head tracking.

Thomas: They introduced this last year into Vision Pro, which allows you to do different gestures by using your head to initiate certain gestures. So to find this new feature, just go over to settings, to accessibility, to head tracking, double tap that, and then follow the prompt and the onboard screen to set this option up. And now you can use your head gestures. Now you can use your head tracking to implement different gestures. And there you have some of the highlights of what's new in accessibility in iOS 26.

Thomas: There are some fusing things in there I just absolutely love. And of course, there are many, many more that you will be able to find. So for those that are Braille literate for yourself, the big one is the Braille access notes. That is kind of like taking a note taker, but implemented on your iPhone. There'll be future podcasts on this particular topic. feature, so stay tuned to listen to that.

Thomas: And there are other great little accessibility features that you'll see hidden throughout iOS 26 within accessibility that you can just take a gander on yourself. So I hope that some of these new features that you absolutely love and you're going to be able to take advantage of it, or at least just know about those features that exist. So that, again, that is what's new in iOS 26 for accessibility. My name is Thomas Domville, also known as AnonyMouse. Until next time.