My experience is limited to my elderly parents who have trouble seeing. With the text size Apple allows them to set it to, their phones are unreadable. Text runs off the screen in every app, 1st and 3rd party.
In their bill example, the user is told to confirm with the provider. Why not offer to call the number on the bill? Instead of telling them to use text detection, do it for them? Presumably Apple Intelligence would already have that capability. I’m afraid this will be a gimmick at best.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, the grip is good to see. Hopefully they don’t charge the apple tax on it.
I have a problem with astigmatic halation that makes ‘dark mode’ difficult to read. Since iOS 26, multiple aspects of the system have been made dark only, contrary to the system setting. Writing text correctly should be the lowest of low-hanging fruit.
I suspect this is more of a flashy ‘AI’ promotion rather than reflective of any real commitment.
They treat new industry advancements as technology, not products itself.
AI will be a feature to improve the customer experience, not the product itself.
https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android...
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2024/09/talkback-u...
The on-device ML models that are being used by Google and Apple are both quite new and in active development.
Many of Apple's most successful products have shipped years or even a decade after their competitors. They have tried using first-mover advantage in the past but typically fail when using that strategy.
Don't get me wrong, Apple using these technologies to help humans who are in need of help is laudable. But let's not pretend we don't know why most corporations don't look into this kind of thing. I think if we're being honest, we all very much know why they leave this sort of thing to the always nebulous "others".
> “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” It was the same thing for environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas that don’t have an immediate profit. The company does “a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive. We want to leave the world better than we found it.”
— https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim...
I was just answering the question of why other corporations don't.
Money.
There's relatively little money in helping the visually impaired. You have to do it because you want to do it. Not because you're going to get rich.
It turns out Windows introduced this feature in 2022, not last year. https://www.elevenforum.com/t/turn-on-or-off-live-captions-i...
I see, you're interested in the screen reader improvement. Android added that in 2024. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2024/09/talkback-u...
Windows added it in 2025. https://www.accessibility.org.au/narrator-update-brings-ai-d...
I assume almost everyone looks into spending less money than more money for equivalent goods and services.
Increasing their productivity is helping humans.
My one hope is that this eventually becomes widespread enough to stop alt text scolds.
this sort of thing really needs input from someone that uses it before we can judge it