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Apple’s new Accessibility Reader can customize text across apps — and in real life

Apple is building Accessibility Reader into its Magnifier app, allowing users to customize the text of books and menus.

Apple is building Accessibility Reader into its Magnifier app, allowing users to customize the text of books and menus.

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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
Emma Roth
is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

Apple has revealed a new reading mode “designed to make text easier to read for users with a wide range of disabilities, such as dyslexia or low vision,” the company announced on Tuesday. The feature, called Accessibility Reader, is coming later this year and will allow users to customize a text’s font, color, and spacing in any app on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro, as well as have it read aloud.

Users can even use Accessibility Reader to change the appearance of text on physical objects, such as menus or books. That’s because Apple is building the feature into its Magnifier app, which already lets users use the camera on their device to zoom in on and detect the objects around them. With the integration, users should be able to use the Magnifer app to modify text in the real world, too.

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Accessibility Reader can change a text’s font, color, and spacing.
Accessibility Reader can change a text’s font, color, and spacing.
Image: Apple

In addition to iOS and iPadOS, Apple has announced that it’s bringing Magnifier to macOS as well. This will let users use their Mac’s camera — or connected devices like an iPhone or webcam — to zoom in on surroundings and modify text.

The update is coming as part of a wider rollout of accessibility tools, which includes “Accessibility Nutrition Labels” that highlight accessibility features in apps and games on the App Store, along with a new way for users to take notes in Braille.

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