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Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

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271–280 of 300 posts

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#271

This is why Apple is the best. They’ll make features like this because it’s the right thing to do, even if it won’t really make any difference to 99.99% of their customers. They really earn consumer loyalty.

I read this very skeptically.

When I hear eye tracking I immediately think of advertisers targeting me based on what I look at, NOT quadriplegics using Apple devices.

Maybe I'm a cynic

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#272

remember how google added js apis to detect active tabs. and rendering intersection. complex webapps could use less battery and have richer interaction. everyone rejoiced. nobody implemented anything useful. soon, advertisers, google included, was selling ads packages by "viewability". lol. can't wait for safari to lead with "eyed" ads.

I know this is a joke, but for for anyone who was wondering,

> all data used to set up and control this feature is kept securely on device, and isn’t shared with Apple.

It's not an API adopted which apps can use, it's a system pointer, like a mouse or trackpad

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#274
Can't wait for my son to try this. He has general coordination issues due to a brainstem injury but the eyes are probably the part of the body he can better control. I'm not a fan of Apple's software and didn't have a great experience with the Vision Pro but I am excited to try it out.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#275
post #230

Bummer the eye tracking is iOS only. I’ve been wanting focus-follows-eyes for decades.

I share the sentiment. I've long noted in situations with grids of terminal windows where focus-follows-eyes would be so much faster and present less friction than using hotkeys or focus-follows-mouse.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friends that use synthetic voices prefer cleanliness of the older and familiar voices. One friend listens at about 900 WPM in skim mode and none of the more realistic voices work well at those rates.

Every once in a while I'll hear a blind person's phone audio while I'm out and about and it sounds like an unintelligible stream of noises, but they're interacting with it and using it and getting information from it. It's amazing, a whole other world of interaction from what I experience with my phone. I kind of want to learn how they're interacting with it.

Here's a great demo by a blind software engineer that explains some of it: https://youtu.be/wKISPePFrIs?si=YOLcW9b2uyLXLn59

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#277

This is why Apple is the best. They’ll make features like this because it’s the right thing to do, even if it won’t really make any difference to 99.99% of their customers. They really earn consumer loyalty.

This was the right thing to do, but I doubt “the right thing to do” was the primary motivator for it. This is smart marketing that helps position them as the more caring, inclusive, and capable tech brand. It also expands their reach more than a fraction of a percent. 13% of Americans have some form of disability.

75+% of Americans become disabled (mostly temporarily) in their lifetime. So it will affect most people someday. And everyone dies in the end.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#278
post #164

I have better than 20/20 vision (yes, really) and now mobility problems, but there are some macOS accessibility features that I love. One is Zoom: I hold down two modifier keys and scroll, and can instantly zoom in to any part of the screen. It is extremely smooth, the more you scroll the higher you zoom, instantly and with high frame rate. Great when you want to show someone something, or just zoom into a detail of…

> and now mobility problems

Meant to write “no mobility problems”, but too late to edit now.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why, but I feel like I only get motion sickness in the back of Priuses. It must be something about their braking curve. I don't sit in enough EVs to tell if they're the same.

I suspect most people's interaction with Prius' are Uber rides. Maybe Uber drivers just get bad habits from the platform incentives (drive fast = get more rides)

Well, I definitely sit in the back mostly in Uber rides and that's supposed to matter somehow.

Re: Apple announces new accessibility features, including eye tracking

#280
post #251
post #56

macOS has had a version of eye tracking for a while, it's really fun to try out. System preferences -> Accessibility -> Pointer Control Then turn on the "Head pointer" option.

Cool! That works surprisingly well. But how do you click while using this? Clicking on the trackpad doesn't work, when it's tracking my head.

That's a separate option. The option above head tracking in those settings allows for adding your facial expressions (smiling, blinking etc) as shortcuts for clicks.
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