What is Apple Intelligence and how can it help blind and low vision people?

Apple Intelligence is how Apple has branded a range of features powered by Artificial Intelligence which began to appear in late 2024 on some iPhone, iPad and Mac models. Although the initial offerings were a little underwhelming, Apple introduced a beta version of Siri AI, a major AI makeover of the ageing Siri digital assistant, in September 2026, which is well on its way to becoming a very powerful and flexible tool.

Apple Intelligence is available on iPhone 15 Pro models and iPhone 16 models and later. It is also available on iPhone Air and iPhone Duo. It is available on iPads with M-series chips or A17 Pro chips. Apple intelligence is also available on all Macs with M-series chips and on the MacBook Neo. 

In addition to Siri AI, currently available Apple Intelligence features include writing tools, summaries of messages and notifications, live translation, much improved photo and video searching and clever photo editing, AI image generation and the integration of the ChatGPT AI chatbot into Siri.

However, the most significant Apple Intelligence feature for visually impaired users is likely to be Siri AI, which has now begun rolling out in English in iOS 27. Although the current test version is still a little unreliable Siri AI is hugely more capable than the old Siri and can perform many tasks which would previously have required several Voiceover steps. I'm currently updating the site for Siri AI.

As for the rest of Apple Intelligence, I've been using it since it became available in the UK. For me, one of the most helpful features is the option to have summaries of email messages shown in the Inbox list in place of the first few lines of the email. The summary is often enough to let me decide to delete the email or decide that I can safely leave it until later. That's a real boon to anyone who has either to read slowly with large text or to have VoiceOver speak all the text.

I previously found Siri's integration with ChatGPT to be useful but now find that I'm relying almost exclusively on Siri AI.

I've not been motivated to use the writing tools for any real writing task but their proof reading and ability to change the style of text may be helpful to many.

The AI tool in Photos to remove unwanted distractions from photos along with several other AI features is impressive but probably of little interest to many of us. The improved search in photos may help those of us who want to show specific photos to friends. You'll be able to ask for things like "child wearing a green T shirt on a trampoline" and it can even locate specific scenes in videos. If you want detailed descriptions of a photo just ask Siri AI to describe it for you.

The image generation app, Image Playground, lets you create illustrations from a text description. Live translation is available in the Phone, Messages and FaceTime apps. I haven't had an opportunity to test live translation yet.

Siri AI looks set to become a particularly valuable tool for visually impaired users, especially those who find VoiceOver difficult so, if you are updating your iPhone or iPad please consider buying a model that can support Apple Intelligence unless you are sure that Siri AI won't be important for you.

Apple has announced that there are now two tiers of Apple Intelligence in iOS and iPadOS 27. The fullest features will be available only on iPhones and iPads with 12 Gigabytes of unified memory, that is the temporary working memory used by the processors. Please see selecting an iPhone for a visually impaired user for more detail about this.

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last updated 27 September 2026