Assistive Access provides a distinctive iOS and iPadOS experience that makes it easier for people with cognitive disabilities to independently operate their iPhone or iPad.
With Assistive Control Access on your iPhone or iPad, items on the screen are larger, features are presented more prominently, and it’s easier to navigate and understand what tasks can be performed.
The simplicity of emergency access
Apple wants iPhone and iPad to be usable by everyone, including people with cognitive disabilities. The feature adds extra ease of use for essential functions.
The special view provides a customized user experience for Phone and FaceTime, combining them into a single Calls app. The default Messages, Camera, Photos, and Music apps have also been simplified specifically for this feature. The feature has a clean and simplified interface, with prominent, high-contrast buttons and large text labels.
The feature includes tools that allow caregivers to customize the user experience to the user’s needs. For users who prefer to communicate visually, Messages includes an emoji-only keyboard, and the ability to record a video message that can be sent to family and friends.
Grid or list view
Users and caregivers can set a visual grid or a row layout for the home screen and apps to make the text more noticeable. This way the apps can be consulted quickly.
Feedback from users with cognitive disabilities and their caregivers was used to develop this feature. The focus was on their favorite activities, which are also central to using iPhone and iPad: communicating with friends and family, taking and viewing photos and listening to music.
Set up emergency access
- Open Settings on your iPhone or iPad (iPadOS/iOS 17 and later)
- Navigate to ‘Accessibility’
- Select ‘Assistance Access’
- Enable ‘Configure auxiliary control access’
- Follow the steps on the screen
This allows you to enable or disable certain tasks of apps. Some standard Apple apps are fully optimized for this function, others are not. You can add all applications to this view, but then the usage is not optimized.
After setting up, you can activate additional options via Settings â–¸ Accessibility â–¸ auxiliary control access. Is the view already active? Then press the side button three times and choose ‘Stop auxiliary control access’, enter the code to stop playback.
Disable Assistive Access
Once you enable the option, the simplified view will be used. If you want to make adjustments, you have to press the side button of the iPhone or iPad three times. You will then see a simplified menu where you can adjust the brightness or the dark mode, for example.
In addition, you can also start an emergency call or stop the emergency control access by pressing the side button three times. For each change, you will need the unique access code for emergency control access. This can be a different code than the device access code.
Completely disable emergency control access
If you don’t want to use the simplified view at all, press the side button three times and select ‘Stop Assistive Control Access’, enter the code to stop the view. Then go to Settings â–¸ Accessibility â–¸ Assistive Control Access and disable the feature completely via ‘Reset Assistive Control Access’.