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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

#201

Post by mortenjorck »

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 actually can’t use Touch ID, at least year-round.

I have naturally very dry skin, and no matter how much moisturizer I used in colder months, I had to constantly have it relearn my fingerprint, to the point where I would just give up and use a passcode instead.

Face ID, on the other hand, has been flawless since my first phone with it in 2018 (minus some mask-related challenges during the pandemic). It and ProMotion are basically the two reasons I bought an iPad Pro over an iPad Air.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#202

Post by alwillis »

nottorp wrote: post #109
philistine wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accessibility benefits everyone, but in the basics you’re right. Too many simple straightforward options are now strictly inside accessibility. At least on the Apple side. And don’t get me started on hidden command line settings.

> Too many simple straightforward options are now strictly inside accessibility. Reduce Motion. Is it an accessibility feature or does it just get rid of an annoyance and is good for everyone?

> Reduce Motion. Is it an accessibility feature

Yes--some people can become ill with certain types of motion on a screen [1].

[1]: https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/understanding-vestibular-d...

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#203

Post by pests »

burntwater wrote: post #128
Ocha wrote: post #54

Music haptics can be a cool way to teach someone how to dance and “feel the beat”

I'm severely hearing impaired and enjoy going to dance classes - swing, salsa, etc. If I'm standing still, I can easily tune into the beat. But once I start moving, I quickly lose it on many songs; dance studios aren't known for having large sound systems with substantial bass. I don't know that this specific setup would fix anything -- it would need some way of syncing to the instructor's iPhone that is connected vi…

> A few months ago I discovered the "karaoke" feature on Apple Music, in which it displays the lyrics in time with the music.

JSYK Spotify has had this for years too, its just under the "View Lyrics" button but it does highlight the sentence/word karaoke style. It used to be a "spotify app" back in that genre of the service.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#204

Post by Terr_ »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #194
astrange wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a pet-theory that certain older folks are cautious with technology because they grew up with stuff that would break expensively if you pressed the buttons in the wrong order.

Then when they see younger people just randomly explore-clicking to get things working--because their experience is that it's a safe tactic--that can gets misinterpreted as expertise, leading to: "Wow, kids these days just know technology."

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#205

Post by aikinai »

mortenjorck wrote: post #201
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.

I actually can’t use Touch ID, at least year-round. I have naturally very dry skin, and no matter how much moisturizer I used in colder months, I had to constantly have it relearn my fingerprint, to the point where I would just give up and use a passcode instead. Face ID, on the other hand, has been flawless since my first phone with it in 2018 (minus some mask-related challenges during the pandemic). It and ProMotio…

My mother had the same issue. TouchID would stop recognizing her finger less than a day after setting it up.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#206

Post by llm_trw »

case wrote: post #174
avtar wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try https://www.modernhn.com if you haven't already. UI elements have more spacing around them, especially if zoomed in.

Hadn’t heard of this before, it looks great! Need it on mobile though, and would be happy to pay a reasonable fee for it.

You can install the addon on mobile firefox.

Ironically because of addons I now use firefox exclusively on mobile.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#207

Post by astrange »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #194
astrange wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It actually improved by no longer being a real button, instead it was a fake indent with a pressure sensor that did a haptic "click". But it still took up a lot of space on the front.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#208

Post by bentruyman »

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.

Can you name a single accessibility feature where this has happened ever? Kinda seems like you just made up some fake reality.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#209

Post by miki123211 »

stacktrust wrote: post #10
xnx wrote: post #9

I love accessibility features because they might be the last features developed solely with the benefit of the user in mind. So many other app/os features are designed to steal your attention or gradually nerf usefulness.

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

Some of them are, at least on Apple's side, but it's always for a good technical reason. Screen recognition is only available on devices that have a neural chip, things that require lidar don't work on devices that don't have lidar and so on.

Google is worse at this, Talkback multi-finger gestures used to be Pixel and Samsung exclusive for a while, even though there was no technical reason for it.

Apple has a different problem, many accessibility features aren't internationalized properly. Screen recognition still has issues on non-english systems, so do image descriptions. Voice Over (especially on Mac) didn't include voices for some of the less-popular languages until very recently, even though Vocalizer, their underlying speech engine, has supported them for years. Siri has the same problem.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#210

Post by miki123211 »

pxc wrote: post #103
Loughla wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, they kind of can't be. The disability community is pretty up front about lawsuits.

That's because the ADA has no enforcement mechanism other than lawsuits, isn't it? Our whole legal disability rights infrastructure is designed to be driven by lawsuits, and sits inert if nobody sues.

That's actually a good thing, especially if there are people specializing in bringing these lawsuits en-masse.

Over here in Europe, where there's no lawsuit culture, some laws (not necessarily accessibility-related, our legislation in that area is far weaker) are violated almost without repercussions. When the government is the only party that can bring charges and the government is complacent / ineffective, nobody actually gets charged and nothing gets done.

There's also the problem of incentives, if you can get a lot of money from a lawsuit, you have a far better incentive to sue and find a competent lawyer. You may even deliberately look for and sue violators as a moneymaking scheme, some companies in the US do this. This puts pressure on businesses to comply with the law. Even if you're piss-poor and never sue anybody, you still benefit.

If this lawsuit culture doesn't exist, the best you can do is write a report to the government and hope they actually act on it. Many people don't know how to write these, and since there's no money in it, getting a lawyer to do it for you is an expense that nobody is going to help you recoup.

The people handling these reports don't help either, they're usually 9-to-5 salaried employees who aren't judged too hard on performance, so they have far less of an incentive to actually pursue cases.

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