Assistive Access Isn’t ‘Buried’
Wired ran a story by Jeremy White earlier this month in which White talks about turning an iPhone into what he calls “the perfect kids’ dumb phone” using Assistive Access.
“Surely there must be a way to set up an iPhone as the perfect dumb phone for children—one with access to only the apps you deem appropriate, no internet browser, but with all-important tracking and navigation abilities—without having to pay another company to make it work? Well, there is. It’s been hiding in the iOS Accessibility menu the whole time. And, inexplicably, it’s a feature Apple barely talks about,” White wrote on the Fourth of July. “It’s called Assistive Access. Introduced with iOS 17, Apple designed it for those with cognitive disabilities. If you’ve never encountered or stumbled across it, it’s a distinctive iOS experience: fewer options, more focused features, easier to navigate. The aesthetic is ideal for kids: large, friendly tiles for the apps replace the smaller icons of the ‘normal’ Apple interface.”
While White’s piece is good—it’s definitely one for the accessibility-is-for-everyone canon—I quibble with its framing. First and foremost is the headline; I don’t appreciate how Assistive Access is characterized as being “buried” and “hidden.” You absolutely can make a cogent argument the Accessibility menu is as deep as it is broad, but the problem with saying Assistive Access (or any other accessibility feature) is squirreled away implies there are engineers at Apple Park who have gone rogue and purposely hidden functionality so as to make them, to White’s point, undiscoverable and thus unusable. This notion not only is irrational, it’s offensive. To say Assistive Access is buried is to imply it doesn’t matter—which, pulling the string further, also implies the people who rely on it for cognition’s sake also don’t matter. White’s intent is pure, to be sure, but the verbiage is completely wrong. This is what happens when you have writers who maybe aren’t all that familiar with accessibility or disability writ large writing about features they don’t really understand. More pointedly, it illustrates the need for accessibility in tech needing its own coverage area by beat reporters. If newsrooms can hire AI reporters, they can—and should—hire accessibility reporters.
Regarding White’s assertion Apple “barely talks about” Assistive Access, it’s fair criticism. I wish Apple would do more during its WWDC keynotes to include a section about the accessibility features announced coincident with Global Accessibility Awareness Day. The announcements are made mere weeks apart from one another, and I believe WWDC would be the perfect time for the company to remind audiences these previously-announced features are also coming to devices later in the year. Especially this year with Siri AI, it feels like accessibility is, predictably, a mere footnote. Ironic too, given VoiceOver has been revamped with Apple Intelligence.
