Speech

Person in motorized wheelchair looking at a Mac computer on a desk

If you have a speech disability or prefer to connect without using your voice, these innovations give you more ways to communicate, your way.

UpdatedLive Speech

Takes your typed words and speaks them out loud.

Available on:

iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch

Type what you want to say, and your device will speak it out loud. If you are unable to speak, have a speech disability, or prefer to communicate through text, you can use Live Speech to stay connected during Phone calls as well as in-person conversations. You can also save commonly used phrases to help you easily respond during daily interactions and conversations. For example, you can create a “coffee shop” category to group phrases you frequently use like “I’d like to order a tea” or “can I have cream and sugar with that?”

Set up Live Speech on:

Update:

Categories for Live Speech. Live Speech offers the ability to group phrases into categories like Saved or Recent, or any user-generated categories like Food or School.

UpdatedPersonal Voice

Create a voice that sounds like you.

Available on:

iPhone, iPad, Mac

Those who are at risk of voice loss now have a simple and secure way to create a voice that sounds like them.1 Personal Voice guides you through a series of randomized text prompts to record 15 minutes of audio that can be used to generate a voice that sounds like you.2 If you have difficulty pronouncing or reading full sentences, you can even create your Personal Voice using short, three-word phrases. This feature uses on-device machine learning to keep your information private and secure. And you have the option to sync Personal Voice with end-to-end encryption on iCloud to use your voice on other Apple devices. It integrates seamlessly with Live Speech, so you can type what you want to say and have your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch speak it aloud in your Personal Voice.

Set up Personal Voice on:

Spoken Content

Reads any text on your screen aloud, including letters and words as you type.

Available on:

iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Vision Pro

Spoken Content includes a collection of features that enable your devices to read text out loud. Use Speak Screen if you want to hear the content of your entire screen. Or try Speak Selection if you want to select and hear a specific range of text. During speech playback, you can control the pace of the reading more precisely with Speech Controller. And Typing Feedback speaks every letter you type. Spoken Content is available in more than 60 languages and locales, with more options to customize settings such as pitch range for your preferred built-in voices.3 On Apple Vision Pro, Spoken Content is currently available only in U.S. English.

Set up Spoken Content on:

UpdatedAccessibility Shortcut

Add, organize, and customize shortcuts for the tools and settings you use most.

Available on:

iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Apple Vision Pro

Easily add, organize, and customize the features you use the most in Control Center or System Settings with the Accessibility Shortcut. You can triple-click the side button, Digital Crown, or power button to quickly access your favorite features — like Live Speech or Spoken Content — without needing to leave the app you’re using.

Set up Accessibility Shortcut on:

Update:

Redesigned Control Center. The redesigned Control Center features new groups of controls, which you can access more fluidly with a single, continuous swipe down on the Home Screen. Add more controls from the Controls gallery, which shows all of your options in one place, including new controls from your favorite apps.

Back Tap

Double- or triple-tap the back of your iPhone to perform custom tasks.

Available on:

iPhone

Back Tap lets you double‑tap or triple‑tap the back of your iPhone to perform a range of custom tasks automatically.4 You can use Back Tap to start using your favorite speech features, like Live Speech or Speak Screen, even faster.

Set up Back Tap on:

iPhone

UpdatedSwitch Control

Control your devices using mouth sounds like a click or a pop.

Available on:

iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Vision Pro

Switch Control makes it easy and efficient to control your device with a variety of adaptive switch hardware, wireless game controllers, or even sounds. You can use item, point, and manual scanning to navigate sequentially through onscreen keyboards, menus, and the Dock. Sound actions for Switch Control let you use simple mouth sounds — like a click, a pop, or “ee” — to navigate sequentially and perform actions onscreen. And the same switch or sound actions you use to navigate and control your iPhone and iPad can be turned into a game controller.5

Set up Switch Control on:

Update:

Finger-tap gestures. Switch Control will include the option to use the cameras in iPhone and iPad to recognize finger-tap gestures as switches.

Go deeper with videos from Apple.

Learn tips, tricks, and how-tos for speech features from Apple Support on YouTube.

Watch now

Make yours. showing Speak Selection feature.

Discover more about Apple accessibility features.

Learn more