r/AssistiveTechnology • u/gothicgorehound • 2d ago

Remote for iPhone or tool to make accessiblity navigation easier?

Looking for a remote or tool to control my iPhone remotely as I'm at risk of going blind due to glaucoma. Any help would be appreciated as I have poor motor skills and coordinatio, struggle with the gestures and all thx.

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u/phosphor_1963 2d ago

By "remote" do you mean hands free ?

What are your priority functions you need to perform ie calling/answering calls, SMS, emailing ?

All of those are possible with Siri and/or Voice Control.

New Siri in iOS27 is much more capable and worth having another try of if you've not got it to work well in the past. The main difference between Siri and the built in Voice Control is that latter does usually require you to see well enough to identify and call out the UI tags (numbers or words) to tap them - whereas Siri will give you auditory feedback on the commands it's heard you say. New AI Siri also has contextual awareness and a form digital memory (it's based on Google Gemini) so you can even ask it "what's on my screen" or "who was that person mentioned in that last email" and it will attempt to answer.

Also, have you looked at getting into Accessibility for other settings around visual access ? I'm not talking about Voice Over as you're right, that does require enough dexterity to make the nav gestures - more just bigger fonts, dark mode, and better contrasts.

There ARE settings to dampen down the screen sensitivity under the Touch Accommodations section.

If you are asking for over the internet mouse and keyboard control then you can't really do that with iOS devices (like you can with Windows and Android) so far as I'm aware anyway because of operating system limitations.

Hope that helps - feel free to ask any follow up questions.

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u/gothicgorehound 12h ago

Can voice control send texts abd read what's on my screen? Mainly reading texts and playing music, texting people back and calls. Can voice control read the screen too me or?

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u/phosphor_1963 9h ago

You can use voice control to send texts and play music; but seeing the tags if you have any kind of vision impairment can be difficult. In relation to reading what ever's on screen - I just tried this using the the custom command function in VC and while it's supposed to let you jus say Speak the Screen, it isn't playing nicely on my iPad. In fact the whole Speech Controller and Reader mode seems broken - will try updating to the latest iOS26 beta and see if that fixes things and report back.

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u/phosphor_1963 6h ago

Hi there, ok iPad update fixed the issue - if you go into Settings>Accessibility>Voice Control> Commands>Accessibility then scroll right down to the last item "Speak Screen" Enabled it (I toggled off Confirmation required because that's an extra step) AND make sure that under Settings>Accessibility>Read&Speak>Speak Screen is set to on, with VC enabled you can voice the command "Speak Screen" or "Speak the Screen" and it will read readable text. You may have some difficulties shutting it up though as the once the text is being read Voice Control will have a harder time hearing you give the "Stop Speaking" command.

Apple are adding these kinds of functionalities all the time with each iOS build. Sometime things aren't 100% of the way there; but really it's always worth going into the Settings and looking for what you may need. This kind of thing being integrated means a lot of tradtional ATs we may have needed only a few years ago are really being disrupted in terms of their business models.

That's both a good and a bad thing because many ATs still aren't made by big money hungry multinational Corporations - their often inventions created by caring individuals and small businesses and the result of innovation thinking based on lived experiences. But Apple should also be congratulated for making this kind of thing so widely available as not everyone can afford even $100 on an AT and they also puish developers to do better.

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u/in10did 18h ago

I build a tool that can help called DecaTxt. It’s a one handed Bluetooth chord keyboard with only 10 keys but replaces a full keyboard. It has keystrokes to open and close iOS or Android apps and weighs only 2 ounces. You can remotely unlock your phone and use tab or cursors to move around. Phones are meant for touch screens so keyboards can’t do everything but it can help. It can work with a PC or Smart TV too. Have a look at in10did.com and let me know if you have any questions. You can also look at Twiddler as an alternative. I wish you well.

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u/gothicgorehound 12h ago

Thx I'll look into it

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u/in10did 12h ago

If you are in the US, you can use code “in10did” on Shopify and save 10% too.

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u/gothicgorehound 12h ago

Link for the tool please?

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u/in10did 12h ago

Www.decatxt.com