70. Resident Exclusives- Assistive Access & Accessibility for iPhones

In this episode, Michael teaches Assistive Access and other accessibility features on iPhones, focusing on users with iOS 17 or higher while noting options for earlier versions. He explains how \Assistive Access allows for a simplified home screen with larger apps and customizable layouts. Michael discusses adjusting various settings, including volume controls and the dialer keypad for calls and messages, and highlights that apps maintain normal functionality within Assistive Access. He also covers how to start and exit Assistive Access securely with a passcode. Additionally, he introduces Assistive Touch for easier navigation for users with physical challenges and encourages listeners to explore these settings. 

Watch and follow along to get the most out of your iPhone’s features!

A full demonstration is available on our website.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] You can find a full demonstration of this tutorial on our website at parasolalliance. com. Just click on the resource tab and it's under Resident Education. 

Hello, my name is Michael, and today I'll be talking about assistive access and accessibility for iPhones. 

To get started, you will need iOS 17 or higher in order to do this on an iPhone. If you don't have iOS 17 or higher, don't worry, we will still cover some accessibility settings that will still be available for you and everyone else as well.

So assistive access, what is it? Assistive Access is a simplified home screen that allows people to use the iPhone easier and more effectively. As you can see on the right side of the screen, it makes the apps a lot bigger.

There's not as many apps on the screen, and that's really the only thing you can see. Assistive Access is really there for simplicity, to make it easier for you to use it, as well as keeping things in an orderly fashion, in a row or a grid, however you like it. So we'll go ahead and [00:01:00] get started, and go ahead and find where the Assistive Access is in the phone.

Where it'll be is in Settings. You'll scroll down to Accessibility, and then Assistive Access will be at the very bottom. Once you're in Assistive Access, you'll see these two screens on the right side of the presentation. They'll let you put applications in, any ones you want. You can change the view from grid to row, as well as all the other options, such as wallpaper, if you'd like to be in the background.

If you'd like to allow volume buttons or not. If you'd like to allow the ringer or silent mode to work. If you would show time on the lock screen, so if you like a clock on the lock screen or anything like that. If you would like to show battery level on the lock screen, show notification baggages, and allow Siri.

The very last one, passcode settings, will be something we'll deal with towards the end. And that'll be how you start assistive access, so we won't get to that just now. But once you have adjusted all these settings how you like, changing the row to grid, adding in, turning off, turning on, any of these other settings at the bottom, [00:02:00] we'll go ahead and look at the applications.

So calls and messages will be a little bit different than any of the other apps. All the other apps will work how they normally do when you're not in assistive access or looking at the iPhone normally. But calls and messages will be much different. So for calls and messages, you'll be able to receive calls from either selected contacts, all contacts, or everyone.

However, you can only make or send messages and calls to selected contacts in the phone. So you can't choose the option to make a call to anyone or make a message to anyone in your contacts. You'll have to go in there, Select the contact you like and then keep going down the list and saying I need you know this person that person they Need to be a person I can call or text at any given time and you'll choose all of those people and then once you're done You'll move on to the next part of the settings So I would suggest having the show dialer keypad always on just in case let's say you go to the doctor They give you their phone number and they tell you to [00:03:00] call them or something like that If you don't have that dialer keypad on then you wouldn't be able to type in their number and call them.

They would have to be on that selected contact list that we mentioned earlier. So definitely have the dialer keypad on as well as the in call options of keypad and speaker. Have those on as well. It'll just make the calling experience a little bit easier. If you like speakerphone because it's a little bit louder, you can do that as well.

So all of these options are definitely helpful and I would have them on. For the messaging options, you can have it tap to hear a message, so when you click on it, it'll just start talking to you, it'll read out the message out loud, as well as conversation details, if you wanted to have that summarized for you as well.

The other options at the bottom are message input, which means do you want to have the keyboard available, do you want to have a video selfie or emoji available, so that's all completely up to you. I would recommend at least the keyboard available, but the emoji and video selfie are definitely something that are more personalized and completely up to you if you want to add them or not.

But since we're done with the calls and messages, we can move [00:04:00] on to what the other apps will look like and how you'll set them up with assistive access. For example, here on the left side, I have ESPN and Assistive Access. If you want to have that on and available, you can choose it, and then it's going to ask you a couple different settings questions.

Each app will be different. However, they'll majority be the same. So it'll ask you if you want to have any notifications, Face ID, Bluetooth, a microphone, local network and location. So you'll be able to choose, if you want the app to have access to that or not. More or less, you'll say yes to mostly everything, unless there's something on there that you say, I don't want the person who's using the phone to have the ability to do that.

And you can turn that off from there. When you're in Assistive Access, these apps like ESPN or maybe a banking app or a weather app will all work how they normally did before. So you won't have to worry about getting used to a different layout or a different display. Once you click on the app in Assistive Access, it'll look exactly like how it did normally on the phone.

So once we get all those settings [00:05:00] adjusted, you add all the apps you'd you change all of the settings on assistive access at the bottom of the screen, such as, the wallpaper, volume buttons, etc., you'll be able to start assistive access. And where that'll be is at the very top of the main page of assistive access, they'll say something to start assistive access.

So once you're all ready, you'll click that, It's going to ask you to set a passcode for assistive access. What I would recommend is putting the same passcode or PIN that you use on the phone currently. If you don't have one, then you can make it something simple. If you really want to, like 1111, it doesn't have to be something too complicated, mainly because when you're in assistive access, you don't want to get stuck in there and not have the ability to leave.

So what that passcode does is, if you want to leave assistive access, You can exit it with that passcode, but you do need it. So something to definitely remember, jot down, or make it something that you would easily remember. So we'll go from there once you get it all set up, if you want it or if you don't want [00:06:00] it.

So once you click star assistive access, you put in your passcode, it'll begin to enter assistive access. It'll look very much like the phones on this screen. So it'll have all your apps in this order. You'll have that wallpaper if you want. And you'll be able to use any of these apps how you'd like.

Except for calls and messages will be a little bit different. You'll still be able to make calls, receive calls, all that kind of stuff. Just depending on what settings you chose earlier. So that really is it for assistive access. The only other thing I wanted to mention was if, let's say, you don't want assistive access, you want to get out of it, how you can get out of it is clicking the power button on the right side three times.

Once you do that, it'll give you the options of either going to settings, emergency, or exiting assistive access. Then it's going to ask you to type in your passcode that I mentioned a little bit earlier. You'll type that in, and then your phone will go back to how it normally was before.

So it's really easy to get out if you don't like it. So you can play around with it, see if it's something you would like, and then leave if, let's say, you don't like it. So there's a lot [00:07:00] of options in here. They make it easy to get out, easy to get in. It's just adjusting all those different settings to how you might want it.

So now that we're done with Assistive Access, this is the part for anyone who doesn't have iOS 17 or higher. Or if you do, you can still use all these options here. All the other accessibility options available. So there's a lot of them in vision, a lot of for physical and motor including, touch face ID all those kinds of things that would help you use the phone a little bit easier, as well as it can look at your hearing devices, you can put subtitles on the phone if that's a little bit easier for you.

And you can enable live speech as well. What live speech is, it's just that if you talk into the phone, it'll do what you tell it. So completely up to you and how you want to use it. But definitely take a look at these settings. If it's something that interests you, play around with them. And you can always turn them off if you want.

But one of the main ones that I'll talk about is display and text size. And that will be in accessibility, And then over here at the top in the vision [00:08:00] category. So once you click on display and text size, you'll be able to see all the different options in it. The most important ones that I think are larger text and bold text.

So if you have a hard time seeing the phone, if let's say you think the font size is a little bit too small for you, you can turn on larger text They have a couple different options about 5 or 6 so you can choose and see how big you want it.

If you want it as big as it can go, or if you want it somewhere in the middle, they have all those options available as well as bold text will make it a little bit pop out more. So makes it easier to see and makes it easier for the person using the phone. 

How you see the phone and if it helps you. So like reducing transparency, increasing contrast, those don't necessarily help you see the phone. It all does depend on the person from case to case. So definitely try them out, see how they look for you. And you can always just turn them off if you don't like how they look.

The only one I wouldn't recommend is Smart Invert. That completely changes the screen [00:09:00] color. So I wouldn't recommend that one. All the other ones though are very good to use. So that's just one of the accessibility features. But another one that I wanted to touch on was something called Assistive Touch.

And where that will be? Is in settings, accessibility, and then in that physical motor, you'll click on touch. So once you click on touch, it'll take you into this assistive touch menu. You want to turn it on and this will give you the option to tap things that maybe you wouldn't normally be able to, or do things a little bit easier.

So what it'll look like is over here on the right side, it'll look like this home button. There'll be a white dot in the corner of your screen. You can move it around wherever you'd like, but once you click on it, it'll give you all these different options. So if you want to go to the home screen, you can click on that home.

If you want to go to the control center, that's a quick way to get to the control center. Same with the notification center. If you were to click on device, then it would give you all these different options to either lock the screen, rotate the screen, Increase the [00:10:00] volume, decrease the volume, or unmute.

So this is more for if you're having a hard time doing things, or maybe your screen is a little bit broken, and some features don't work how they should. You can use AssistiveTouch to get around that and get to those certain places, like Control Center or Notification Center, as well as locking the phone if your lock button doesn't work anymore, or if your volume button doesn't work, you can use this as well.

There are a lot of other options in here, so you can customize things. As you can see, there's another part called Custom and Gestures. I wouldn't really recommend that that's a little bit more advanced and harder to use, so I would stay away from that, but the Home, Control Center, Notification Center, and Device are all very good things to use with this AssistiveTouch.

And you can always turn it off if you don't like it. Again, play around with these settings, see how you like it, and go from there. But that does conclude the presentation. Thank you guys for listening, and have a good day. [00:11:00]