Apple announced upcoming accessibility enhancements for macOS 16, focusing on user privacy and introducing new tools to assist you. These updates, detailed in part through AppKit documentation and an Apple Newsroom release, will change how you interact with your Mac and how apps access certain system features.
Improved Pasteboard Privacy
macOS 16 will significantly change how apps interact with your system’s pasteboard. It will also introduce new applications to aid users with visual impairments. Apple enhances Pasteboard Privacy Controls by introducing alerts when an application programmatically reads from your Mac’s pasteboard. This system manages copied data. This change mirrors existing iOS privacy.
Developers will receive new methods to check the type of data on the pasteboard without reading its actual content. This helps prevent unnecessary alerts. You will gain precise per-app control. You can choose to always permit an app access, block it entirely, or receive a prompt each time. The system shows an alert only when your direct input on a paste-related element did not cause the access.
New Magnifier App for Mac
Apple designed the new Magnifier for Mac application for users with low vision. It connects to your Mac’s camera or an iPhone via Continuity Camera. This lets you zoom in on physical objects, text, or a whiteboard. Magnifier supports reading documents using Desk View, which uses your iPhone camera to show your desk. You can use multiple live session windows.
For instance, view a presentation with a webcam and follow a book using Desk View simultaneously. You can also customize the view. Adjust brightness, contrast, color filters, and perspective to make text and images easier to see. You can capture, group, and save these views for later reference. Magnifier for Mac integrates with the new Accessibility Reader. This transforms text from the physical world into a custom legible format.
Introducing Accessibility Reader
Apple also adds Accessibility Reader. This new system-wide reading mode helps users with various needs, like dyslexia or low vision, read text more easily. It gives you new ways to customize text with many options for font, color, and spacing. In addition, it also supports Spoken Content. You can launch Accessibility Reader from any application. Apple also built it into the Magnifier app. This lets you interact with real-world text, like in books or on menus.
Further Accessibility Refinements
macOS 16 will also bring “Braille Access” to your Mac, transforming it into a full-featured braille note taker. Apple explains this will include an app launcher, support for taking notes in braille, performing calculations using Nemeth Braille, and opening Braille Ready Format files. Live Captions will also be integrated for real-time transcription on connected braille displays.
Other notable additions include “Vehicle Motion Cues” coming to Mac, designed to help reduce motion sickness, offering new ways to customize the animated onscreen dots. For developers with limited mobility, Voice Control will introduce a new programming mode in Xcode. Voice Control will also feature vocabulary syncing across your devices and expanded language support.
Apple encourages developers to adopt the new pasteboard APIs ahead of the public release of macOS 16 and provides information on how to test the new behavior. The company typically unveils more details about its operating system updates at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).