Apple's competitors have had these features for years (Android for 7, Windows for 1), so it's really an indictment of Apple. They give lip service to helping the visually impaired, and this press release is good marketing for the non-visually impaired people who don't know this.
Really? I haven't used Android recently, but I very much doubt 7 year old Talkback was any where near as good as Voiceover. I also haven't seen a single accessibility improvement in Windows recently. The most accessible Windows apps are usually based on older toolkits like win32. Edge is very accessible, but 99% of that comes from Chrome.
https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android... worked very well in English when it launched. I'm sure it supports more languages now.
It turns out Windows introduced this feature in 2022, not last year. https://www.elevenforum.com/t/turn-on-or-off-live-captions-i...
I see, you're interested in the screen reader improvement. Android added that in 2024. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2024/09/talkback-u...
Windows added it in 2025. https://www.accessibility.org.au/narrator-update-brings-ai-d...