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Month: July 2024

The Good and Bad of Accessibility in Two Minutes with the Olympics

Published July 27, 2024 by Kelly Ford

Tuning into a bit of the Olympics this morning, within two minutes the reality of accessibility in 2024 is on display. Audio description for a channel showing multiple sports is impressive but the schedule view of the Olympics iOS app not so much. The progress is appreciated here but the gaps are still far too many.

NBC has taken a page from the NFL’s Red Zone and introduced a channel called Olympic Gold Zone. It provides whip-around coverage of events and live audio description of a two-box split screen for two sports mixing between live commentary is impressive as an example.

The Gold Zone channel is part of the coverage available on the Peacock streaming service. Scott Hanson of NFL Red Zone fame is one of the channel hosts. Coverage runs for 10 hours a day, starting at 6A central.

Downloading the Olympics iOS app and choosing schedule though, shows accessibility that would not make it to the metal round. My experience with VoiceOver was a jumble of words, untagged images and more. I had no success understanding the actual schedule.

Back to the Gold Zone, the live audio description is excellent. As you’d expect, you get details that are just not included in the standard TV broadcast. Player reactions, details about the stadiums, surroundings for events in the city and more. And all of that is mixed in with both the Gold Zone host and announcing from the sports. It will be a fun two weeks of athletic competition.

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Audio Ducking Enhancements in iOS 18

Published July 21, 2024 by Kelly Ford

If you use a screen reader, the concept of audio ducking is likely not new to you. For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to a concept where any audio outside of a screen reader’s speech is lowered automatically when a screen reader is communicating.

Apple has made some changes in this area that for me have been quite positive. You can now adjust both when audio ducking is applied and have greater control over the level of ducking. This is done with settings changes for both audio ducking and volume in iOS 18.

To make these adjustments, ensure that both volume and audio ducking are items you have added to the VoiceOver rotor. Then use those options as described here.

Previously audio ducking was strictly an on/off choice. In iOS 18, on has been replaced with two choices. You can now have audio ducking set to always or only when speaking. This leaves you with a total of three settings, off, only when speaking and always.

The ability to adjust the amount of ducking is a bit more subtle to discover. In fact, originally when I discovered the option to adjust volume to percentages above 100%, I thought it was a bug. Setting a volume of greater than 100% was not producing any detectable change for me and in fact it seemed odd to be able to set volume to more than 100%.

The way this all works together is that setting a volume of greater than 100% is actually lowering the volume of audio when ducking but controlling the amount of ducking applied. For example, when setting a volume of 105%, the audio that is ducked, is ducked by 5% from the original volume. Likewise, set a volume of 150% and audio when ducked, and audio is half of the original volume.

The ability to adjust the amount of ducking is a welcome enhancement. Depending on the source audio, the amount you want it lowered to still be audible but not impact screen reader speech can vary greatly. The result here is like having a specific volume control for the ducked audio.

Again to use these features, ensure that both volume and audio ducking are added to the VoiceOver rotor. Go into Settings:Accessibility:VoiceOver:Rotor and select those options along with anything else you want to use.

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