Apple adds new iPhone accessibility features in iOS 26 and adjusts auto‑subtitle settings in iOS 27

Apple expanded the iPhone’s built‑in accessibility suite with iOS 26, introducing smarter tools powered by Apple Intelligence. New options such as Back Tap, Voice Control, AssistiveTouch, Live Captions, Personal Voice and Live Speech let users navigate, communicate and interact with their devices more efficiently, benefitting people with a range of abilities.

In iOS 27 the company added an automatic subtitle feature that displays live transcriptions for video content. While intended to aid accessibility, many users find the captions intrusive and occasionally inaccurate. The setting can be turned off temporarily from the playback controls, or permanently by going to Settings → Accessibility → Subtitles & Captioning and disabling the toggles for language detection, muted playback and skip‑back behaviour.