Accessibility Features on the…

1. Hearing Impairments

For children with hearing impairments, iOS9 offers some handy features. For example, you
have complete control over how the audio is played back through speakers or headphones on
your iPad. Many songs or videos split their audio so that the left and right ear jacks hear different
sounds. But if you go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Hearing you can turn Mono Audio
on so that both ear jacks receive the same sounds. You can also play with the left and right audio
volumes separately, allowing you to leave one louder than the other if you wish.

Children and teachers can customization features to subtitles and captioning. Go to Settings >
General > Accessibility > Subtitles & Captioning. Here you can choose to turn captioning on or
off and also change the style of captions. You can choose large print captions (as seen to the
right) or even completely customize them by changing the font, size, color [Link], the iPhone
also allows you to set different (and fully customizable) vibration patterns for different alerts and
phone calls. This way you can tell who’s calling you just by the feel of your phone! Another
way for children with hearing impairment; a child can wear a hearing device that is connected to
IPad along with the same connection to a device the instructor wears close to their mouth so the
child can get a clear understanding of what the instructor is saying so the sound travels straight
through the device of the students.

2. Vision Impairments (low vison options and voiceover)

For children with vision impairments - Go to Settings > General > Accessibility and you
have a few options to change the way your screen looks. You can Zoom to magnify the entire
screen. It takes a somewhat complicated move (once turned on in your settings, you need to
double-tap with three fingers in order to zoom in), but if you can help you child learn to control
the zoom it can be a really powerful tool. Children are just a tap away from seeing small print
and exanimating details in every picture. For Children who are blind can turn on VoiceOver in
the Accessibility settings, to turn the touch interaction with the screen into one based on audio
feedback, such as synthetic speech, or audio alerts. The finger gestures to interact by way of
VoiceOver are different from the ones sighted users generally apply for their visual interaction
with the screen.
To execute specific tasks, VoiceOver gestures need to be performed in a specific speed and
direction, and with a specific number of fingers. VoiceOver has multiply voices and dialects
along with other features. This is honestly not that hard, only different!
Social interaction with friend, family, and teachers becomes so much
easier for children by using this feature.

…TAP,TAP,TAP…..ZOOM, BIG PRINT, I CAN SEE THE

3. Motor disabilities (Assistive touch)

Switch Control and Touch Accommodations. For example, now in Touch Accommodations
you can turn off Shake to Undo. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > AssistiveTouch and
turn AssistiveTouch on. You’ll see a small square show up in the lower right hand corner of your
screen which will remain there wherever you go on the iPad (you can move it into different
corners, but it won’t disappear) AssistiveTouch menu allows you to do some simple actions all
from one place with a single tap, like rotate the screen or “shake” the iPad (a necessary
movement for some apps). This menu has also been updated in iOS9 to include quick links to the
Notification Center and Control Center.

It also gives you access to the Gestures menu which allows you to tell the iPad to read two,
three, four or five fingers on the screen no matter how many fingers you actually have on the
screen. Why would you want to do this? Well, what if you have an app that requires your child to
do a two-finger swipe, but they don’t have the fine motor control to do this? You can set your
Gestures to two fingers and now no matter how many fingers your child has on the iPad (one or
all five, which is usually the case with children with less motor skills), the iPad will read it as a
two-finger swipe. How cool is that? You can now customize it even further by going to
Customize Top Level Menu… to add additional icons from a special menu for tasks relating to
Volume, Screen Rotation, Siri and many more.
 You can create custom gestures by going to Settings > General > Accessibility >
AssistiveTouch > Create New Gesture. The screen allows you to do any movement you want and
will record it, from pinching, sliding and swiping to circles, taps, or whatever you can think of. If
you’re working with an app that requires a very specific gesture, you can do that here and record
it. Once it’s been recorded, you simply name your gesture and it will now appear in your
AssistiveTouch menu under Favorites. Choose the gesture, touch the screen and little blue finger
points will flawlessly reenact the gesture you recorded.

4. Guided Access

Guided Access is a way to set certain parts of your screen off limits. Are you using a free app
with ads and your child keeps clicking the ads? Just draw a square
around those ads and suddenly they aren’t clickable anymore! Guided
Access has not changed since the iOS8 updates, but is definitely a feature
worth mentioning for kids with motor challenges or just learning to use
the iPad! Here’s how it works: Go to Settings > General > Accessibility and
turn Guided Access on. You can set a passcode at this point if you want to (make it something
easy, like 1-2-3-4) or you can do it later when you use the feature. You’ll need the passcode to
turn Guided Access off.

You can also use Guided Access to set a time limit on

The iPad has so many different other features that can help every single kid around the
world today, no matter ones difference, This is so vital to children’s academic learning and
technology has come a long way, as long as we keep the use of it under control; I think the future
generation will benefit from technology and the accessible features for the better.