Tomorrow (today in some timezones) is Global Accesibility Awareness Day: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Accessibility_Awarene...

As Terramex pointed out this is tied to a particular, relevant event.

It’s also pretty common for Apple to preannounce some smaller features that are too specialized to be featured in the WWDC announcements. This gives them some attention when they would be lost and buried in WWDC footnotes.

It is also probably an indication that WWDC will be full of new features and only the most impactful will be part of the keynote.

They do it every year at the same time. Also, it’s a small announcement, not a keynote or the kind of fanfare we have at WWDC or the September events. This does not seem calibrated to be effective in an advertising war with another company. All this to say, probably not.

I think it's more of "clearing the decks" for stuff that didn't make the cut for WWDC. I assume WWDC is going to be all about AI and they couldn't find a good spot to put this announcement. "Clearing the decks" isn't a very kind way to refer to this accessibility tech since Apple has always been better than almost everyone else when it comes to accessibility. I don't see this as "we don't care, just announce it early" as much as "we can't fit this in so let's announce it early".