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Stevie Wonder praises iPhone and iPad accessibility

Stevie Wonder has sung the praises of Steve Jobs and Apple, for making its iPhone and iPad devices accessible to people with disabilities.

Luke Westaway Senior editor
Luke Westaway is a senior editor at CNET and writer/ presenter of Adventures in Tech, a thrilling gadget show produced in our London office. Luke's focus is on keeping you in the loop with a mix of video, features, expert opinion and analysis.
Luke Westaway
2 min read

Stevie Wonder has sung the praises of Apple, for making its iPhone and iPad devices accessible to people with disabilities.

At a nightclub appearance in Los Angeles, Stevie (who's been blind since shortly after he was born) took a moment to give a shout out to recently retired Apple founder Steve Jobs, The Next Web reports. We've embedded the video below so you can check it out for yourself -- skip ahead to the 4m 38s mark for the Apple-related bit.

"I want you all to give a hand to someone that you know, whose health is very bad at this time... his company took the challenge in making his technology accessible to everyone.

"There's nothing on the iPhone or iPad that you can do that I can't do."

That's quite an accolade. The iOS platform, which features on both the iPhone and iPad does indeed have some impressive accessibility chops, designed to make the devices easier for disabled people to use. Both devices come with a service called VoiceOver, for instance, which makes the phone read out any on-screen text that you tap.

Support for wireless braille devices, the ability to zoom into the screen and a colour reversal tool that changes everything to white text on black backgrounds are other enhancements. There's the option to have a voice speak each letter of the keyboard as you run your finger over it too, to make typing a shade easier.

We've seen a set of new accessibility options that should be coming with iOS 5, the new version of Apple's mobile operating system, that would appear to make devices easier to use if you struggle with physical buttons.

Are you with Stevie Wonder in your admiration of Apple? Or do you prefer Android? Let us know in the comments, or on our Facebook wall.

Image credit: Entertainment Press / Shutterstock.com