iPhone 13 Accessibility Features & Apps

The following is a list of features and apps that I currently use on my iPhone 13 running iOS 16.2, and some other apps I’ve used in the past, with links to any posts I’ve made about them. Also check out my blog post giving my first impressions of the iPhone 13, and do let me know if you have any recommendations for features and apps I should check out.

Accessibility Features

I’m really pleased that the Accessibility option is now a main menu item in its own right, instead of being tucked away under the General heading like it used to be.

Here are some of the options that I’m using, which are just scratching the surface of what you can find here.

• Zoom – This allows me to use a 3-finger double-tap gesture to zoom in on the screen.
• Display & Text Size > Smart Invert – This flips the screen colours, so that I have black backgrounds with white text, which reduces glare and greatly improves contrast. But it won’t invert photos and videos, as you obviously need to see those properly. It also won’t invert apps that have their own Dark/Night modes enabled (and the iPhone now has its own Dark mode too, as noted below)
• Display & Text Size > Bold Text, Larger Text, Reduce Transparency & Increase Contrast – These all help to make things bigger and more prominent, so they’re even easier to read.
• Spoken Content – While I don’t use the VoiceOver screen reader, I do have options enabled here, so that I can use specific gestures to make the phone speak selected text or the entire screen, as it is easier to have things read to me in that way sometimes.
• Audio Descriptions – If I were to download any films or shows from Apple TV, this will enable audio description to be played automatically, when it’s available.
• Touch > Back Tap – This allows you to double-tap or triple-tap the back of the phone to perform system tasks, accessibility actions or trigger shortcuts. So I’ve enabled that as well, but I’ve found it rather hit-and-miss, as it often doesn’t react to the taps.
• Accessibility Shortcut – This allows me to activate the accessibility features of my choice by triple-clicking the side button. If just one item is selected, the triple-click will switch it on or off straightaway, but if multiple options are selected, then they’ll appear in a menu instead. As well as Smart Invert and Zoom, I also have Magnifier enabled here, as that’s a really useful app that lets me use the camera to read and look at things close-up (and it lets you change the brightness, contrast, colour filters, etc). I also have it as an option in the Control Centre as well.
• Per-App Settings – This allows you to customise which accessibility features are active when using certain apps. That’s a really useful addition, because some apps don’t work well with things like Smart Invert or larger text sizes. So I’ve already used it to turn off Smart Invert for a few apps that don’t look right when it’s switched on.

Meanwhile, under Display & Brightness on the main Settings menu, there are also a couple of other options that I’ve enabled:

• Dark Appearance – This inverts the menus, toolbars and skins of apps so that they have a dark background and light text. But it won’t always invert the pieces of content they display, depending on how the app has been set up. And some apps have their own Dark/Night modes that I’ve enabled too. This is different to Smart Invert, which changes everything apart from images or videos, and it also won’t invert anything that Dark Mode has already done. So it’s safe to have both options on together. Safari illustrates this best – Dark Mode will invert just the app toolbars and menus, but websites will still have white backgrounds, whereas Smart Invert will flip the web sites as well. You can also set a schedule to switch between the Light and Dark modes if you want, such as sunset to sunrise or customised times.
• Display Zoom – This is a new feature that enlarges the controls on the phone. This is different to the Zoom accessibility feature above, which lets you manually zoom in and out on the screen.
• The options for bold and enlarged text can also be found in this area of the Settings app.

Apps

I won’t bother listing the standard pre-installed apps that come with the iPhone, and indeed I’ve deleted a few that I don’t need. But here are a list of apps that I’ve downloaded from the App Store:

• Communication & Social Media:
  • Facebook & Messenger
  • Instagram & Layout (photo collages)
  • Skype
  • Twitter
  • Whatsapp
• News & Weather:
  • BBC News, Sport & Weather
  • Met Office Weather
• Camera:
  • Scanner Pro – For scanning documents. It detects page edges automatically, and combines scans into multi-page PDFs.
  • Seeing AI – Free Microsoft app that recognises text, handwriting, products, currency, faces, etc, and speaks the details to you.
• Entertainment:
  • Audible
  • BBC Sounds
  • Youtube
  • Sennheiser Mobile Connect – Occasionally used for live audio description at theatre shows. See posts about Wicked and We Will Rock You.
• Travel – Planning & Navigation (see blog post):
  • Google Maps
  • Citymapper – For public transport in London and a few other cities.
  • Moovit – For public transport in unfamiliar towns and cities.
  • Strava – I’ve been using this to record my walks since August 2020, syncing the data with CityStrides to produce a full LifeMap of everywhere I’ve been. This has motivated me to walk further as I explore the city and try to fill out as much of the map as I can. Other options for combining maps include Strava’s Heatmaps, Multiple Ride Mapper, Stats Hunter & Wandrer.
• Travel – Railways:
  • National Rail Enquiries – For checking times, platforms, delays, etc.
  • Railway Guardian – For reporting crimes and other issues on the railways.
  • Trainline – For booking train tickets.
  • TfL Go – Accessible travel app by Transport for London.
  • Station Master – 3D maps and information about London’s Tube stations.
• London:
  • Eventbrite
  • Meetup
  • Smartify – Recognises art with your camera and gives you details about it, for selected museums in London, Europe and the USA. I first tried it at the Wallace Collection.
• Shopping:
  • Amazon
  • DPD – To monitor deliveries when companies use DPD as the courier.
  • Just Eat – For ordering takeaway deliveries.
  • M&S – To access and use my Sparks loyalty card offers.
  • My EE – My mobile network provider.
  • Nectar – To earn extra loyalty points when shopping at Sainsbury’s.
  • Wetherspoon – For ordering food and drink in their pubs.
• Finance:
  • Paypal
  • NS&I Premium Bonds Prize Checker
• Health:
  • NHS App – For accessing information, services, medical records, etc.
  • Apple Health – Among its many features, this pre-installed app allows you to set up a Medical ID with important information. That way, in an emergency, health workers and others can access the information quickly from your lock screen. So it’s worth filling it in.
• Utilities:
  • Amazon Alexa
  • Google & Google Drive
  • HP Smart – For communication with my printer.
  • Microsoft Authenticator
  • Sonos – For updating and calibrating my TV sound bar.

Previously Installed Apps

Here are a selection of apps I’ve used or experimented with in the past. Some are no longer available or have different features since I used them.

• Audio Eyes – Audio description app for a few of the Science Museum’s galleries. See my review of the Information Age gallery.
• Any Tour (formerly Cities Talking) – Walking tour app I’ve used a few times.
• Clipomatic – Uses voice recognition to generate subtitles in real-time when you record videos. You can then edit to fix errors. It’s great for captioning videos for social media, and I used it when promoting my charity abseil.
• Frieze Art Fairs – I used this to explore the Frieze Sculpture Park in Regent’s Park in August 2019.
• IFTTT – For automating social media posts. I removed it as the free version became far too restrictive and the Pro version wasn’t cost-effective for my limited needs.
• Issuu – Magazine app I used for reading the show guide when I attended the Naidex event in May 2018.
• MoviePro – The main Camera app on the phone is perfectly fine for my needs, but I’ve used this more powerful app for Aniridia Network conference recordings in the past, as it supports the use of external microphones.
• NHS Covid-19 App – Contact-tracing app that anonymously checked whether you had been in close proximity to other app users who tested positive for Covid. It was discontinued in 2023 after all the progress in vaccinations, testing and treatments.
• Pocket Guide London – I enjoyed doing a few tours with this app, as it was interesting to listen to and directed you clearly using GPS-triggered audio.
• Soundscape – Free Microsoft app giving 3D audio information about your surroundings. I demonstrated it in my documentary What Is Normal?, as it’s very handy for many people, but I don’t have much need to use it personally.
• Super Tile Smash – Tile-matching game, which I mentioned in my February 2019 Favourites.
• Tate – App for browsing the Tate Modern, with a couple of audio tours that I tried.
• Thinking Bob – Social group I met up with several times during my early days in London, which really helped me to settle in to the city.
• TrailTale – Walking tour app that I wasn’t impressed with.
• ZOE Health Study App – I was among millions of people who used this app during the height of the Covid pandemic, as answering a few quick and easy questions each day helped researchers track the spread of the virus. The app is still running, as the researchers are using it to monitor a wider range of global health issues, but I fell out of the habit of updating it and got rid of it in the end.