Apple this week released visionOS Beta 3 to developers.
Per Filipe Espósito at 9to5 Mac, the new software includes more information about Optic ID, new system icons, and refreshed system sounds. Also noteworthy in this release—which explains the existence of this very piece—are new accessibility features. As Espósito notes, Apple has added two: Both Hands and Eye Input. Regarding the former, Apple is seemingly allowing users to bring their hands together to control Vision Pro’s interface. As Apple says, the alternative input method is intended for people whom “tapping your thumb and a finger together isn’t an option for one of your hands.” For the latter, Eye Input lets someone use Vision Pro with a single eye if using the other is a problem.
As I’ve written at length in the past, there remain many questions about Vision Pro’s accessibility. The headset, by its very nature of being worn on your face, is a new kind of wearable computer that requires vastly different affordances than wearing a computer in your ears (AirPods) or on your wrist (Apple Watch). Apple has created Vision Pro such that the primary input methods are eye-tracking, with finger-tapping and voice also central to the user experience. As you’d expect of them, Apple clearly has considered that not everyone will be able to interact with visionOS as has been originally designed out of the box. The advent of Both Hands and Eye Input stand in support of that supposition.
The Vision Pro news cycle continues to fascinate and intrigue.
News of the latest visionOS beta comes after Apple shared an inside look (which include interviews with indie app makers) at its Vision Pro developer labs, happening in Cupertino, London, and elsewhere.
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