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Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

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Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#191

Post by astrange »

Baeocystin wrote: post #176

One of the most important accessibility features they could bring back are physical home buttons on at least one ipad. I am completely serious. I work with a lot of older adults, many of whom have cognitive challenges, and the lack of a physical button to press as an escape hatch when they get confused is the #1 stumbling block by a mile.

When there were physical buttons, it was very popular in Asia to enable the accessibility option to put a virtual one on screen instead, because they were afraid the physical one would break. So it was kind of useless in the end.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#192

Post by diebeforei485 »

foooorsyth wrote: post #184
lowkey wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I have a last gen base iPad with Touch ID and a home button. I am pretty tech savvy but actually prefer this form factor.

Touch ID is so drastically superior to Face ID in so many common “iPad scenarios”, eg. laying in bed with face partially obscured. I don’t understand Apple’s intense internal focus on FaceID only. FaceID with TouchID as an option when a device is flat on the table or when your face is obscured is so much nicer.

> I don’t understand Apple’s intense internal focus on FaceID only.

It isn't. Just a few days ago the new iPad Air has Touch ID.

Only iPad Pro uses Face ID. For iPad Pro users who use it for work and unlock it hundreds of times a day when in an office or during a commute, Face ID is vastly superior.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#193

Post by astrange »

sleepingreset wrote: post #186
foooorsyth wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Touch ID is so drastically superior to Face ID in so many common “iPad scenarios”, eg. laying in bed with face partially obscured. I don’t understand Apple’s intense internal focus on FaceID only. FaceID with TouchID as an option when a device is flat on the table or when your face is obscured is so much nicer.

FaceID builds profitable user habit loops. More real-estate on the screen to show things, easier to thoughtlessly purchase things if your password is a glance at the camera, etc. I don't think this is a user-focused decision, I believe it's a profit-focused one.

You can't buy things just by looking at the camera, there are forced button presses and the App Store tends to make you enter your password.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#194

Post by diebeforei485 »

astrange wrote: post #191
Baeocystin wrote: post #176

One of the most important accessibility features they could bring back are physical home buttons on at least one ipad. I am completely serious. I work with a lot of older adults, many of whom have cognitive challenges, and the lack of a physical button to press as an escape hatch when they get confused is the #1 stumbling block by a mile.

When there were physical buttons, it was very popular in Asia to enable the accessibility option to put a virtual one on screen instead, because they were afraid the physical one would break. So it was kind of useless in the end.

> because they were afraid the physical one would break

On early models it was actually quite common for the button to stop working after a year or two. The durability has since improved, but habits die hard.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#195

Post by diebeforei485 »

corps_and_code wrote: post #18
stacktrust wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> developed solely with the benefit of the user in mind Hopefully accessibility features are never artificially segmented to higher priced devices.

I wonder if that would be legal, at least in the US. That feels like it'd be a violation of the ADA?

It would only be a violation if it's purely software locked.

If it requires a chip that supports specific operations, and entry tier devices have an older chip, that wouldn't be a violation.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#196

Post by astrange »

0xEF wrote: post #106
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I was just thinking it was so that they can get more attention-economy eyeballs for ads.

This will happen. These features are always ushered in as ways to make someone's life easier, and often that is exactly what it does, for a time, before some product manager figures out how they can maximize profit with it. Growth at all costs, I guess.

Apple doesn't have product managers. (More importantly, the hardware has been technically capable of eye tracking since Face ID was added.)

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#197

Post by brookst »

avtar wrote: post #152
datahack wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t (yet) have accessibility challenges beyond glasses but hitting the tiny arrows is incredibly difficult. How come HN doesn’t update to be more accessible? It’s been a long time… I’m surprised it hasn’t been talked about by the team there.

As someone who has carried out accessibility audits, I can unfortunately attest to this topic being a blindspot in tech circles. I remember hanging out with fairly senior frontend devs from a FAANG company who didn't know what purpose skip links served on websites. It can also be an uphill battle to advocate for remediation once design and development work is already baked in.

Yep. And I think there’s an interesting implicit bias where younger / mornjunior developers often get tasked with things like that, so they see no problem

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#198

Post by throwanem »

ben_w wrote: post #73
justsomehnguy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recommend creating a Shortcut to toggle this setting. Huh? It's not built-in? Android (or at least Moto) has it for years, auto enable on the schedule or the sunrise/sunset.

There's a built in "night shift", but that just changes the colour temperature, it doesn't make everything monochrome red.

No, that's (part of) what Color Filters is for.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#199

Post by astrange »

tallytarik wrote: post #101

> “We believe deeply in the transformative power of innovation to enrich lives,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. Does this line actually mean anything? Press releases are so weird.

I always wonder why press releases include claims that a person said a paragraph or more of text that noone would ever say out loud, but this one actually does sound like something he'd say. In a keynote video, anyway.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#200

Post by eviks »

anyfoo wrote: post #189
eviks wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's better to have an easy way to hold a mouse button via keyboard with your left hand and continue to use one finger on the touchpad rather than do the whole three fingers to drag

Not for me, no. But sounds like something accessibility options may also provide, and I can see how it may be better for a lot of people.

Which one have you tried?
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