A lot of OEMs and app developers have been tweaking their product to have more accessibility features for their users that may have visual and aural impairments. Spotify has announced some of the new features and tweaks for accessibility, including an auto-transcribe feature for selected podcasts and visual changes in their buttons, text size, and formatting to make the mobile app more “friendly”. In other news, they also announced that they will soon let you download music and podcasts to Wear OS devices.
Spotify announced the three updates that will be rolling out on the mobile app that should help in improving accessibility. Once the update rolls out, you’ll notice that some of the buttons will look different in terms of color, text formatting, and size. The goal is to make the app easy to use for those that have visual impairments. The tweaked button design can also be useful for those who are in low lighted areas and with high-screen reflections.
Users can also increase the text size under the settings of the mobile app. In Settings > Accessibility > Display Text & Size, you can see a Larger Text option and you can just drag the slider to see what size you want. You can always adjust it if the size seems to have pushed out the other buttons and functions out of the way. The basic idea is to adjust it according to what your eyes and fingers can comfortably use. Also, this seems to be available for iOS only for now and no mention was made when or if it will come to Android.
Spotify will soon bring auto-generated podcast transcripts in limited beta for select Spotify Original and Exclusive podcasts. This will allow listeners/readers to read through the text of the episode either along with the podcast or on its own, without sound. You will also be able to navigate through the episodes by clicking on the paragraph to start playing from that point. Those who have hearing impairments will be able to access these podcasts through the generated transcripts.
Lastly, Spotify announced at the Google I/O Conference that the Wear OS platform will soon support downloading of music and podcasts from the streaming platform. This way they can continue listening to Spotify content even when they leave their phone at home, like when running or working out. They did not specify when this will happen but we sure will hear more about this soon from both Spotify and Google.
