On this episode of Shaun of the Shed, host Shaun Preece explores the hand gestures feature of the Apple Watch, a game-changer for users who are blind or partially sighted. Shaun guides listeners through setting up and using pinch and clench gestures for easy navigation without needing to touch the screen. His practical tips, combined with personal anecdotes from his travels, make this episode an engaging and informative guide on enhancing accessibility with Apple technology.
On this episode of Shaun of the Shed, host Shaun Preece explores the hand gestures feature of the Apple Watch, a game-changer for users who are blind or partially sighted. Shaun guides listeners through setting up and using pinch and clench gestures for easy navigation without needing to touch the screen. His practical tips, combined with personal anecdotes from his travels, make this episode an engaging and informative guide on enhancing accessibility with Apple technology.
Highlights:
Speaker 1:
Shaun of the Shed, an AMI original podcast.
Shaun:
Where have you been? Hello, you beauties, and welcome back to another episode of Shaun of the Shed. I am Shaun Preece, I'm sat in a garden shed, and this is the tech show where I talk about technology for blind and visually impaired people like me. Hope everyone's doing well. Let's just jump right into it because today, I want to talk about the Apple Watch. I'm wearing one right now, specifically a new accessibility feature. Well, I say new, but we'll get to that in just a second. Now, recently I was talking on the Double Tap Radio Show from AMI Audio talking about a trip that Steven and I had made to London. And on that trip, I was using the Apple Watch in order to check train times, tram times, check my messages, WhatsApps, and whatever else. But the thing is, when you're traveling, you don't always have a spare hand, right?
Because I've got my white cane in my right hand, I've got a terrible cheap backpack that I always use that just keeps slipping down my shoulder, and I got to keep hutchin it back up again, and of course, a sandwich is always in my left hand, so there's no free hand, no spare hand to actually touch the screen of the Apple Watch and use it. But it doesn't matter because there is an accessibility feature called hand gestures, which means you don't have to touch the screen. You simply clench your fist or pinch your fingers together to navigate and move and interact with the Apple Watch. It's great. Now, the reason I said it was a new feature is because recently, Apple introduced the series nine Apple Watch and the Ultra 2 Apple Watch, and one of the big points they were talking about was the double tap feature. Yeah, double tap again, the radio show. Check it out.
The double tap feature, which means you could do things like answer calls or play and stop music, and various other things, by simply performing those gestures I just talked about, specifically in this case, the double pinch gesture. Although that is only available in the series nine and the Ultra 2 Apple watch, the point is that those hand gestures have actually been around on an Apple Watch for quite a while now. It may be a case that you don't need the new series nine or Ultra 2 and the Apple Watch you've got right now, you can do pretty much the same thing with. So I'm going to show you how to use hand gestures on your Apple Watch. As long as you've got a series four or above, or an Apple Watch, SE1 and above, or Apple Watch Ultra 1 and above, you can do this.
So let's get to it. Okay, this episode is going to be super short because setting up this feature is dead simple, which is always nice. Anyway, there's two ways you can set up hand gestures. You can either do it through the settings on the Apple Watch itself, or how I'm going to do it is by using the watch app on the iPhone. It's just easier to navigate. But whichever way you do it, the actual settings and the steps that I go through here are exactly the same, so it's completely up to you. So the first thing I need to do is open the watch app on my iPhone. To do this, I like to use the voice assistant. So I simply say, "Siri, open watch app." Right. So let's jump in here. I'm going to put on my headphones so I can hear my phone, proper DJ, and grab my iPhone.
I've already got the watch app open, so let's take a look. So the first thing we need to do is make sure you've got the my watch tab in the bottom left corner selected, which I do have. And we're going to swipe through everything on the screen, all the watch faces until we get to the accessibility option. So let's do that.
Speaker 3:
At view button, general button, display and bright gestures button, accessibility button.
Shaun:
There it is. I'm going to double tap.
Speaker 3:
Vision heading.
Shaun:
And let's swipe through till we get to voiceover.
Speaker 3:
Voiceover on button.
Shaun:
Double tap.
Speaker 3:
A voiceover switch button on.
Shaun:
Now, you can swipe all the way through until you find hand gestures, if you like. But it is the last option, I think, so I'm going to tap with three fingers just once on the bottom of the screen to take me to the last item
Speaker 3:
Speak seconds button, hand gestures off button.
Shaun:
There it is. So let's double tap on that
Speaker 3:
Hand gestures switch button off.
Shaun:
So the first thing is the toggle button to turn it on or off. Let's turn it on, obviously.
Speaker 3:
On.
Shaun:
There we go. But there is more here, so let's swipe on through.
Speaker 3:
Learn more, link, link, customized gestures heading.
Shaun:
Okay, now it will tell you the gestures you can use and what actions are currently assigned to them. So let's swipe on.
Speaker 3:
Clench double tap button.
Shaun:
Okay, clench. So that's simply making a fist with your hand, clench. A single clench currently is set to double tap. Let's swipe on.
Speaker 3:
Double clench digital crown press button.
Shaun:
A double clench presses the digital crown, which will take you to the apps, or it'll take you to the watch face in our case. Let's swipe on.
Speaker 3:
Tap, move to next item button.
Shaun:
Tap. Now when it says tap, the gesture it's talking about is a pinch gesture. This is where you take your...
I don't know. What finger is this?
... I'm going to say index finger, pointy, you take your pointy finger and pinch it against your thumb, like your pinching a imaginary... Well, I'll let you imagine that. That is what it calls tap. It's just a pinch gesture. And currently that is set to-
Speaker 3:
Double tap, move to next item button.
Shaun:
Move to next item. Let's swipe on.
Speaker 3:
Double tap, move to previous item button.
Shaun:
And a double pinch will move you back to the previous item. It's the same as swiping left with one finger. Now, you can customize those. I'll show you that in just a second. But if you want to reset them to these, which are the defaults, then you would press this button
Speaker 3:
Reset defaults button.
Shaun:
Now in order to actually use hand gestures, you do need to activate it. So for example, you need to wake your watch up, same as unlocking the screen on your iPhone. Wake the watch up, and then perform this gesture in order to use hand gestures. Sounds a bit strange, but you don't want to accidentally start moving or interacting with your Apple Watch by using hand gestures when you don't want to. Although if you double tap on this activation gesture,-
Speaker 3:
Activation gesture, double clench button.
Shaun:
... which is currently set to double clench, if I double tap on here-
Speaker 3:
Selected double clench, double tap.
Shaun:
... and swipe through,-
Speaker 3:
None.
Shaun:
... I can change that and customize which gesture activates the accessibility hand gestures feature. I can even set it to-
Speaker 3:
Selected, none.
Shaun:
... none. So as soon as my Apple Watch wakes up or is unlocked, then I'll be able to use hand gestures. Okay, so let's quickly go back to one of these gestures and see what other actions we can assign to it.
Speaker 3:
Double tap, move to previous item button.
Shaun:
Now if I double tap on that,-
Speaker 3:
Digital crown press.
Shaun:
... I can swipe through and see what other actions we can assign to that gesture.
Speaker 3:
Double tap heading, digital crown press. Double tap, move to next item selected, move to previous item, Taptic time.
Shaun:
So that's quite handy. If you want to get that secret time haptics, which I really like, by the way, you can assign a gesture for that.
Speaker 3:
Magic tap.
Shaun:
And even magic tap, which is that double tap gesture, which is available only, by the way, exclusively on the series nine and Ultra 2. Strange, right?
Speaker 3:
Tab bar selected, my watch.
Shaun:
And that's actually all you need to do. Once you've turned it on and double checked your gestures, we are ready to go. Now before we test this out, I will suggest one thing. By default, I have all my wake options on my Apple Watch turned off, so it doesn't wake up when I raise my wrist. The only way to wake up on my Apple Watch currently is to tap on the screen. Now obviously, if the whole point is you're unable to touch the screen, that isn't much use to you. So if you haven't got it turned on already, I would suggest you turn on Raise to Wake. You will find this in the display and brightness settings in either your Apple Watch or the Watch app. Go in there, swipe through until you find Raise to Wake and turn it on. Anyway, that's how you turn on hand gestures, and let's see how it works.
I told you it was easy, well, at least in theory. All I need to do, now I've turned the feature on, is wake up the Apple Watch, and then perform the various gestures to interact with it. Simple. But do remember this that if you haven't got Raise to Wake turned on, you will need to wake up your Apple watch however you normally do it, either by tapping the screen or pressing the digital crown. Also, remember that I turned off or I set activation gesture to none. By default, what you need to do is perform a double clench, which is where you make a fist with your hand, double clench in order to actually activate hand gestures before you can use them. When you do the activation gesture, you'll feel a little haptic vibration on your Apple Watch, and you are ready to go. Anyway, let's just test it out. So what I'm going to do here is raise my wrist in order to wake up the Apple Watch. And then let's do a double clench to press the digital crown. So let's try that now, raising my wrist, double clench.
Speaker 4:
Watch face, 19:22.
Shaun:
There's my watch face. Let's do it again.
Speaker 4:
Apps activity button.
Shaun:
And now we're in our apps list. Let's pinch.
Speaker 4:
Alarms button.
Shaun:
That's the same as swiping through with one finger to the right.
Speaker 4:
App store button.
Shaun:
I'm just going to keep pinching.
Speaker 4:
Audio books button
Shaun:
Again, and pinch is just using your pointer finger to your thumb like you're pinching an invisible whatever.
Speaker 4:
Alarm activity button. Alarms button. App store button. Audio books button.
Shaun:
Now to go back up the list, go to the previous item, we double pinch.
Speaker 4:
App store button. Alarms button. Activity button.
Shaun:
How cool is that? Okay, let's try something out. So double clench for the watch face.
Speaker 4:
Watch face.
Shaun:
And let's pinch.
Speaker 4:
Take me home.
Shaun:
Take me home. That's my Google Maps complication. Let's keep going. Pinch.
Speaker 4:
Just press record.
Shaun:
Oh, that's very handy for taking telephone numbers.
Speaker 4:
Swipe up [inaudible 00:11:12] custom action. Then double tap to activate.
Shaun:
Let's pinch.
Speaker 4:
Train times.
Shaun:
Train times. Okay, I want to see that. So let's do the double tap, which is the clench gesture, just the once.
Speaker 4:
Back button.
Shaun:
Let's see where I'm at on here. Let's pinch.
Speaker 4:
Departures heading.
Shaun:
This is my departure timetable for Manchester Piccadilly Station.
Speaker 4:
19:04 Manchester Airport.
Shaun:
The airport train.
Speaker 4:
38 minutes late.
Shaun:
Of course it is.
Speaker 4:
Plat.
Shaun:
Plat, which is platform. Again, all I'm doing here is doing the pinch gesture to move through.
Speaker 4:
13.
Shaun:
Platform 13.
Speaker 4:
19:15. London Euston. 15 minutes late.
Shaun:
Everything's late. Let's double tap. Sorry, let's double pinch.
Speaker 4:
London Euston.
Shaun:
And that will take us back to the previous item, the same as swiping left with one finger on the Apple Watch screen.
Speaker 4:
15 minutes late. London Euston. 19:15.
Shaun:
How cool is that? Let's cover the watch up to shut it up. So there you go. That's how you use the hands-free gestures feature on your Apple Watch. I can now take my big headphones off. Oh, that's better. It gets hot under these. As you can tell, look, that's so cool. It's really handy, and it really did come in useful when I was traveling around. If you pair your Apple Watch to a pair of headphones, it's really cool, and it is a lot of information that you can get. So I hope you find that useful. For those of you that ask the question, thank you so much, and I hope that answers your question. Now, if you like this, then why not subscribe And if you did really like it, then why not hit that like button, which is somewhere around here. That's what all the YouTubers say, isn't it? Somewhere around here. And again, if you want to hear more tech goodness, check out the Double Tap Radio Show. You'll find it in your favorite podcast app.
And how about Access Tech Live? That's a great show here on YouTube. Search for Access Tech Live with Marc Aflalo and my very own Steven Scott, thank you so much for watching. Have a great Christmas, have a great holiday season, and I will see you next time. Take care.