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Reviews Of The New HomePod Reveal The Tech Media Has Work To Do In Appreciating Accessibility
Steven Aquino
Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Steven covers accessibility and assistive technology.
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Feb 1, 2023,11:36am EST|
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Apple’s newest HomePod officially goes on sale this Friday, February 3.
Apple
The advent of the second generation HomePod brings with it yet another opportunity to acknowledge the smart speaker’s accessibility to people with disabilities. Besides ecosystem-centric amenities like Handoff, Apple supports a bevy of accessibility features in the device; they include VoiceOver, Touch Accommodations, and much more. This is an important distinction to point out, as I’ve done in this space before. This column is precisely the forum for it.
It’s important to mention because, quite frankly, most reviewers fail to do so.
As a lifelong stutterer who has always felt digital assistants—and by extension, smart speakers—are exclusionary due to its voice-first interface paradigm, it disheartens me to see my peers in the reviewer racket continually undervalue the actual speech component of using these devices. It’s understandable—it’s difficult, if not downright impossible, to [...]
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