Designing for Accessibility: What can an iPad provided to someone with vision issues?

Image: Apple.com

Technology has allowed teachers and schools to transform the classroom so that content and information is now more accessible to all students.  Since I am part of the exploratory schedule for my school I see almost all of the students in the school. One of the most common occurrences in my classroom is for students that have vision problems.   Many students with vision issues have a larger screen that allows them to zoom in when needed.  The students' assignments were given electronically so they could zoom in as well as highlight certain sections to read the text.  Another example of accommodations involved testing and the ability to use a laptop rather than an iPad.  I also work with students that are non-verbal.  These students are provided with a talker iPad.  These iPads have a program that allows the user to hit a series of buttons to put together a sentence or phrase so their thoughts are said to the other person.  This does require a lot of time on both the teacher and aide in order to help the student learn the word, how to push the button at the correct time and use it in a way that others can understand.  

I started by looking at all of the accessibility options on the iPad since we are an Apple district.  When I first went to Settings and then Accessibility my general feeling was that it was set up in a very helpful way.  The different features were labeled and grouped based on the accessibility area it would help: vision, physical and motor, hearing, speech, and general.  Each of these have a variety of features and could be tailored to the person's needs.  One thing that was present on my phone was the Personal Voice but was not accessible on my iPad.  

Image: Personal 

I decided to focus on the vision aspect of the settings and did additional research on Apple.com.  This webpage provided additional information on the feature as well as the type of OS it would be available on since Apple laptops, iPads as well as phones, watches and tv attachments.  I currently have two students with vision issues as well as several students in the past.  This is a common issue and I feel that I will continue to see students with vision issues in the future.  One thing that I noticed with all of these features is that they would need help from someone that does not have vision issues to make sure that they clicked or used the correct features. Each of the features looks to address a portion of the iPad that helps the user see or interact with the features better.  For example, the user can set different portions to zoom in a certain way or what portion of the screen is zoomed in on.  Or the user is able to adjust the display including the color, contrast, and button sizes.  One of the most helpful are the ones that help describe and verbally share the screen, video, or visual to the user.   Apple.com also has several features that can be used by any user who needs to make adjustments.  One that seemed extremely helpful was the ability to adjust specific apps.  Each user will engage in different apps so this will allow more customization and accessibility to the user.