Accessibility

Gym Jockey is for everyone who lifts, with special attention to blind and low-vision lifters. This page is an early outline: tell me whether it's heading the right way.

• Gym Jockey is in beta, and I’m very open to changing it so it works for you.
• Accessibility features are free, and always will be.
• Feedback on the app or this page: support@gymjockey.com.

Audio-first, for everyone

Most training apps make you look things up on a screen. Gym Jockey brings the information to your ears, at the moment you need it. That isn’t an accessibility mode added on top: it’s how everyone uses the app, which is why it suits blind and low-vision lifters so well.

• The voice tells you the exercise, the reps to chase, the plates to add or remove on each side, and when your rest is over.
• Each kind of moment has its own sound, so you know where you are without asking.
• Your notes are spoken when they matter, in your voice or the app’s: how a machine is set up, which pin your weight is on, where the steps on a stack change size.
• The mic is always there during an exercise: a passing thought becomes a voice memo in a second.

Try it in five minutes

• Couch Mode is the quickest way to judge the approach. The first time you open the app, Quick Start sets up one exercise and runs it while you sit down, with nothing saved. If you like it, the rest is details.
• Getting your exercises in is the harder part, and there’s no magic bullet yet. Building them in the app is being optimized for VoiceOver. Meanwhile you can import your history from Hevy, or a program you describe to an AI chat (Settings → Data → Import → AI Import). At the start, I’m glad to help you personally.

Use the screen as little as possible

Mix whichever controls are easiest at the moment:

• Headphone buttons: play, back and forward. Back replays your targets.
• Siri: play, pause, log your reps, rate your effort, ask for the time or your heart rate. Useful, but not always reliable. Commands.
• Apple Watch: the same player on your wrist, in large type, with haptics.
• Lock Screen: the countdown and the controls, without unlocking.
• iPhone: everything. It’s needed in the gym, because it runs the workout.

VoiceOver

VoiceOver users are testing the beta, and it has had serious attention:

• One voice at a time: the app speaks with its own voices and hands its opening line to VoiceOver instead of talking over it.
• A three-by-three grid for the player, on the iPhone and the Watch, that you can learn by heart.
• Direct Touch: touch a part of the grid and it acts at once. On the Watch, the bottom centre tells you your heart rate.
• Magic Tap: a two-finger double-tap does the job you choose.
• Set editors on the iPhone and the Watch designed for VoiceOver: one value at a time, read aloud. The keyboard is rarely needed.
• The main path has had a VoiceOver pass. Editing exercises in detail isn’t finished yet.

Low vision

• Text as large as the layout allows, which also helps anyone training without their reading glasses.
• The main path checked with larger text, increased contrast, Reduce Motion and Dark Mode.
• A Watch designed to be read without glasses.
• Colour never carries meaning alone: the rest timer’s ring also changes its pattern.

Practice before the gym

• Settings → Playgrounds: the headphone buttons, Siri and the heart-rate timer, with no workout running.
• Eyes Free: learn the player by touch, with the screen dark, with or without VoiceOver and Direct Touch.

Reports: the weak point

Charts are visual by nature, and I don’t yet know the best way to make them work without sight. Today:

• After each exercise you hear whether you met your session goal.
• The wrap-up shows plateau warnings clearly, if you track them.
• Your data is yours: the export is a text file an AI can read and answer questions about in plain sentences.

I’m open to ideas, and to integrating with other apps and services that would do this better.

What Gym Jockey isn’t

• Not your eyes in the gym. It won’t find equipment, guide you around the room, read a machine’s display, see your plates or judge your form, and it doesn’t replace a spotter. It remembers what you tell it, and tells it back at the right moment.
• Not for deaf lifters. It’s built on sound. If you’re hard of hearing and stream audio to your hearing aids, it may still work well for you.

Accessibility Nutrition Labels

Apple lets an app declare which accessibility features let people complete its common tasks. Provisional, and changing as the beta goes on:

[CHECK: statuses drafted from the app’s notes of 2026-10-19 plus later work — confirm each before publishing]

Is this the right direction?

This page is a first outline, and I’d rather hear what matters to you before writing more. What’s missing, what’s wrong, what would you want to know before trying the app? Write to me: support@gymjockey.com.

Join the beta

Open this page on your iPhone, or point its camera at the code.

On your phone: get TestFlight, open it, tap through Apple's welcome screens, then Accept and Install.

testflight.apple.com/join/CJ39NVAN

Free during the TestFlight beta. What's TestFlight?

Beta full? Get in touch.

Already testing? What I'd most like to hear →