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Apple unveils new accessibility features

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Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#31

Post by ShinyLeftPad »

jofzar wrote: post #25
ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind people can't change video speed? The control is available right there.

No they are saying that the audio playing for tts would be at like 2.4x what's in the commercial.

I don't get it. The speed of TTS can be adjusted, right?

Pretty sure there's enough blind people who don't listen to voice at insane speeds, because they listen in their non-native second language or for whatever other reason. What's wrong in using lowest common denominator that's 100% accessible to those people as well as people who want faster speeds? Unlike "too fast", "too slow" doesn't get entirely inaccessible, it's just boring.

Such a random reason to criticize for.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#32

Post by isityettime »

asimovDev wrote: post #21
mohsen1 wrote: post #6

Fun fact: This video was made accessible to sighted people because no blind person would ever listen to voice at that speed. Honestly if you ever observe a blind person using computers you'd impressed how they can listen to audio at unimaginable speeds.

https://youtu.be/wKISPePFrIs?si=ahGfFp0U7-pTU9w6&t=43 my go to example of this is this talk by Saqib Shaikh (a blind software engineer at Microsoft) giving a talk about Visual Studio. Link is timestamped

I think it takes quite a lot of practice to reach this speed. It's not rare among blind developers, but I think it still takes a lot of work to get there. Pretty impressive!

I wish more people would watch videos like this just because having a realistic idea of how blind people do certain tasks can help you move from pity or even compassion to a more productive kind of understanding. I think sometimes when you haven't seen it, you can't really even imagine how it can be done.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#33

Post by lotsofpulp »

bilbo0s wrote: post #23
nechuchelo wrote: post #4

This looks like a genuinely useful application of LLMs. I wish more companies focused on how they can help humans instead of replacing us or squeezing us as hard as possible in the name of productivity.

Let's be honest, compare the amount of money a corporation can make helping visually impaired people to the amount of money they can make replacing software developers and financial analysts. Don't get me wrong, Apple using these technologies to help humans who are in need of help is laudable. But let's not pretend we don't know why most corporations don't look into this kind of thing. I think if we're being honest,…

>But let's not pretend we don't know why most corporations don't look into this kind of thing.

I assume almost everyone looks into spending less money than more money for equivalent goods and services.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#35

Post by testfrequency »

I don’t want to discredit more advancements in accessibility, but this feels like accessibility porn.

I have fond memories of an old coworker 10 years ago who is blind. He would use his phone no problem, texting, going about his day, he was even on Tinder (credit to Tinder for making their app so accessible long ago). He would commute on his own, walk to the train station, even transfer to another train during peak rush hour. I’m not saying it was all easy for him, but nothing in this video really stood out to me more than what shirt was on the bed. I know other services/apps have long existed to be the “eyes” for people who need support, but this video feels….uneventful?

I may be cynical about this though, as I often hate how Apple’s marketing makes these emotional bids about how life-critical they are to society - which is fair to a degree..but it just feels cheap to be glamorising “look! we saved this person from pending doom, cool right??”

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#36

Post by dmix »

Darwins_Toffees wrote: post #28

"Vehicle Motion Cues come to visionOS, which can help reduce motion sickness for people who use Apple Vision Pro as a passenger in a moving vehicle. Vision Pro will also support face gestures for performing taps and system actions, plus a new way to select elements with one’s eyes while using Dwell Control." Maybe just don't wear them in a car?

Wearing a headset in the back of an Uber doesn't sound that crazy,

I use those motion cues on my iPhone even though I don't struggle with motion sickness https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OxbjggMcKrk

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#37

Post by isityettime »

embedding-shape wrote: post #18
mohsen1 wrote: post #6

Fun fact: This video was made accessible to sighted people because no blind person would ever listen to voice at that speed. Honestly if you ever observe a blind person using computers you'd impressed how they can listen to audio at unimaginable speeds.

> Honestly if you ever observe a blind person using computers you'd impressed how they can listen to audio at unimaginable speeds. Even better, fire up Orca (or whatever screenreader application your OS comes with) yourself and try to use your computer while shutting your eyes, kind of eye-opening (no pun intended) what kind of experience these sort of users typically get. And also, you quickly start to understand wh…

> you quickly start to understand why they set the speech rate for their voice synthesizer to be so fast, it's almost unbearable navigating applications (and particularly lists) otherwise.

I imagine that for coding it also helps deal with the fundamental problem of an ephemeral stream rather than a persistent document that you can navigate visually in multiple dimensions. Working memory is limited, and getting more text in in a short period of time probably helps you work within that better. I also imagine that working with text via audio all the time gradually stretches and improves memory.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#38

Post by JimDabell »

bilbo0s wrote: post #23
nechuchelo wrote: post #4

This looks like a genuinely useful application of LLMs. I wish more companies focused on how they can help humans instead of replacing us or squeezing us as hard as possible in the name of productivity.

Let's be honest, compare the amount of money a corporation can make helping visually impaired people to the amount of money they can make replacing software developers and financial analysts. Don't get me wrong, Apple using these technologies to help humans who are in need of help is laudable. But let's not pretend we don't know why most corporations don't look into this kind of thing. I think if we're being honest,…

Tim Cook has been pretty clear where he stands:

> “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” It was the same thing for environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas that don’t have an immediate profit. The company does “a lot of things for reasons besides profit motive. We want to leave the world better than we found it.”

— https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim...

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#39

Post by brookst »

Darwins_Toffees wrote: post #28

"Vehicle Motion Cues come to visionOS, which can help reduce motion sickness for people who use Apple Vision Pro as a passenger in a moving vehicle. Vision Pro will also support face gestures for performing taps and system actions, plus a new way to select elements with one’s eyes while using Dwell Control." Maybe just don't wear them in a car?

Trains are a thing.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#40

Post by bitwize »

mohsen1 wrote: post #6

Fun fact: This video was made accessible to sighted people because no blind person would ever listen to voice at that speed. Honestly if you ever observe a blind person using computers you'd impressed how they can listen to audio at unimaginable speeds.

I've heard textual description tracks on television programs before. They come fast, but not screen-reader fast. To the untrained ear a blind person's screen reader sounds like when you somehow get the TI-99/4A's speech synthesizer to read from invalid memory.
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