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Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

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211–220 of 300 posts

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#211
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least on iOS, I can't imagine that happening - apps are not allowed to demand you grant permissions unrelated to the actual functionality. From App Review Guidelines (5.1.1) Data Collection and Storage, (ii) Access: > Apps must respect the user’s permission settings and not attempt to manipulate, trick, or force people to consent to unnecessary data access. For example, apps that include the ability to post photos…

It's not that hard to come with ways to circumvent system restrictions, after all, advertisers are a fierce adversary and have shown many clever ways of invading users privacy in web browsers and mobile apps. In the case of eye tracking I could see a situation where the system perhaps feeds the "malicious" app in question with a hint of which widget is being currently gazed by the user. You could then just build a gi…

This is not about technical restrictions and finding weird legal loopholes, Apple's guidelines don't work that way. It's the spirit that matters, not the letter.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#213
post #17

Accessibility settings are really a gold mine on iOS for device customization (yes, I agree, they shouldn’t be limited to accessibility). I’m particularly interested in the motion cues and the color filters for CarPlay - I have color filters set up to enable every night as kind of a Turbo-night shift mode (deep orange-red color shift), would love to do the same for CarPlay. I also completely forgot iOS had a magnifie…

My favorite is the "allow ANC with just one AirPod in". I have no idea why this would be an accessibility feature. If I turn on ANC, then I don't want it to be disabled just because I'm listening with one ear!

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#214
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, a family member send a photo while I was driving and over Carplay it was described fairly accurately.

It’s sometimes awesome, and often extremely basic. “Contact sent you a picture of a group of people at an airport”. Amazing. “Contact sent you a screenshot of a social media post”. Useless. We know iOS can select text in pictures, so Siri can clearly read it. It knows it’s SoMe, so why not give me the headline?

> It knows it’s SoMe, so why not give me the headline?

There's certainly a non-zero number of times this could go horribly wrong (I'm guessing CarPlay doesn't have any sense of who is in the car with you) and defaulting to not reading them out is the safest option (but they could definitely add a toggle for this, yeah.)

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least on iOS, I can't imagine that happening - apps are not allowed to demand you grant permissions unrelated to the actual functionality. From App Review Guidelines (5.1.1) Data Collection and Storage, (ii) Access: > Apps must respect the user’s permission settings and not attempt to manipulate, trick, or force people to consent to unnecessary data access. For example, apps that include the ability to post photos…

Fortunately apps in the EU don’t have to pass though Apple’s anticompetitive review process, so developers are free to ignore that rule if they simply distribute the app via an alternative store. Unfortunately, poor Americans cannot taste the freedom that Europeans have to be abused by developers.

I was thinking similar (only without the snark); but then I realised this is almost certainly not compatible with GDPR.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Yes they can, but I don't and I still hate needless animations and turn them off. The point is, why is it in "accessibility" when it should be more visible?

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#218

> “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.

Sure it means something, it’s pretty low on the PR talk scale even. Let’s see:

> We believe deeply in

"We", in this case, refers to Apple and as a company can’t believe in anything, it specifically refers to their employees.

> the transformative power of innovation

A new feature will bring forth change

> to enrich lives

In order to make someone’s life better.

So far so good, at least no synergies being leveraged for 10x buzzword transformation. Let’s see if it passes the test: There’s a bunch of new accessibility features, that certainly fits the bill for innovation. As anecdata, at least one of these will drastically change how I interact with my devices, so there’s the transformative power. I will be able to use these new accessibility features to improve both the way I work and how I privately use technology, so one could argue my life is being positively enriched by this transformative power brought about by innovation. Do they "believe deeply" in this? That is only for Tim Cook and his employees to know, but they’re one of the few companies pushing advances in accessibility past the finish line, so they might!

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#219
post #217

If accurate enough it seems like eye tracking could be useful beyond accessibility to eg control iPads without dragging one’s greasy fingers all over the screen. iPad already supports pointers.

I was thinking the same, it would make having an iPad under my monitor much less cumbersome

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least on iOS, I can't imagine that happening - apps are not allowed to demand you grant permissions unrelated to the actual functionality. From App Review Guidelines (5.1.1) Data Collection and Storage, (ii) Access: > Apps must respect the user’s permission settings and not attempt to manipulate, trick, or force people to consent to unnecessary data access. For example, apps that include the ability to post photos…

Fortunately apps in the EU don’t have to pass though Apple’s anticompetitive review process, so developers are free to ignore that rule if they simply distribute the app via an alternative store. Unfortunately, poor Americans cannot taste the freedom that Europeans have to be abused by developers.

Fortunately, the Americans who create these products extract more value from the EU than they invest, or they wouldn’t bother trading with you <3
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