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Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

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Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#91

Post by VyseofArcadia »

aurareturn wrote: post #42
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #17

We should NOT have touch screen interfaces in cars. Full stop. If the driver has to divert their gaze from the road to operate e.g. the heating/AC[0], that is a failure of UX sufficiently egregious to keep the car off the road. It is not a toy, it is not a fashion statement, it is a thousand pound chunk of steel that will indiscriminately kill and maim if not operated with care and diligence. [0] This is the complain…

I wonder if Gen Alpha will prefer pure touchscreen controls in cars.

Preference is irrelevant. It's demonstrably dangerous. Maybe Gen Alpha will also prefer cars without functioning headlights, but those are thankfully banned.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#92

Post by dredmorbius »

babypuncher wrote: post #21
SoftTalker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know most people just buy what is available but I hope there's continued pushback on touch screens in cars. They're terrible.

I think touchscreens are great in cars as long as they aren't used to replace physical controls. I bought a new Ford Maverick last year and it follows this guidance well. I can still do all the important stuff like skip tracks, tune the radio, change volume, all from both the steering wheel and a cluster of physical knobs and buttons below the touchscreen. The touchscreen is useful for less common and more intricate…

Airplane cockpits and avionics are an interesting case where complex inputs are required and, to a very great extent, touchscreens are not used but rather both physical controls and where multiple options are necessary, physical keyboards.

(There are instances of aviation-certified touchscreens, see "Thales integrated touchscreen becomes the world's first product of its kind to gain EASA certification" https://onboard.thalesgroup.com/thales-integrated-touchscree...> (2019), used in the Airbus A350, also "FAA Approves Commercial Touch Screen Display" https://aviationweek.com/business-aviation/faa-approves-comm...> (2015), for the Beechcraft King Air.)

One might think that auto manufacturers could learn from this.

And, mind, I'm of the opinion that if you have to type to control your automobile then someone designed that automobile incorrectly.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#93

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

I believe part of the issue is lawmakers are still dazzled by tech and they over-assume it can improve things.

I think that's why we

    1) have questionable, federal mandates for automatic breaking and
    2) have feds who can't seem to associate distracted driver incidents with in-dash screens.
For the latter, preexisting bias against phones kills motivation to seek actual causes.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#94

Post by chaoticmass »

I have slight nerve issues that make precise double tap gestures difficult. One of the reasons I switched to an iPhone is the accessibility features are quite good and let me work around the issues I have more easily. Given how many older people I see who have the same issue I have but worse, I can imagine this is a very common problem for a lot of people.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#95

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

margalabargala wrote: post #26
bloopernova wrote: post #8

Also those damnable single button interfaces to earbuds, vapes, etc. Older people can have trouble double clicking, it's even more difficult for them to "click 5 times rapidly", and to remember exactly where they are in a UI that has almost no outputs. Hopefully as Gen-X ages, we'll see more thought put into this problem.

Not defending the interfaces here, they do suck, but the elderly definitely aren't the target market for vapes. It's not unsurprising that they're not designed with them in mind.

I believe taking vape off the table leaves the parent's assertion unchallenged.

I've never vaped and I run into complex button schemes regularly.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#96

Post by moi2388 »

ballenf wrote: post #51
jeffbee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't have 89-year-old drivers in cars, either. Full stop. In my city we've had three pedestrian fatalities in less than a year and all the drivers were aged 79 or older.

Mandatory regular (every 5-10 years) driving tests seem like a no-brainer regardless of age. Also seems like the driving tests should be more stringent.

Oh no, much more often. People above 70 can deteriorate really, really quickly. I’d say yearly tests which include doctors checkups and actually driving with them.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#97

Post by grues-dinner »

ballenf wrote: post #51
jeffbee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't have 89-year-old drivers in cars, either. Full stop. In my city we've had three pedestrian fatalities in less than a year and all the drivers were aged 79 or older.

Mandatory regular (every 5-10 years) driving tests seem like a no-brainer regardless of age. Also seems like the driving tests should be more stringent.

The UK at least has a driving testing system with months-long backlogs. They're very slowly getting it under control, but they are doing so by providing around 150k tests per month.

There are something like 30 million license holders. Retesting just half of them every 10 years (and rescinding the licences if the rest) would require about doubling the testing throughput. And it would be political suicide - the so-called War on Motorists is a powerful media weapon. It's an obvious idea that would be very helpful, but I can't see it happening. Unless it's an online test affair, which at least could educate on some of the rule changes. I have confidence they could handily bungle that implementation, however.

At the very least, however, I think they should run some anti-lane hogging adverts and enforce that law more, and also make it a duty of heavy vehicles to slow down slightly to permit overtakes, since that's probably cheaper than the billions and billions they're evidently willing to spend on adding hundreds of miles of extra lanes to deal with the lower capacity of roads caused by bad driving.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#98

Post by thatguy0900 »

01100011 wrote: post #24
iwanttocomment wrote: post #3

This seems to be an real and important problem with capacitive touch screens. My elderly mother is often unable to make a touch register on recent Apple devices when a touch appears to have clearly happened and with reasonable force. She blames it on her fingers being "numb" but there genuinely seems to be a problem unrelated to her actions. (I've used the devices in question, and they appear to be fine. This is not…

Mom is almost 82. Just bought her an iPad to try because the computer was getting difficult to use with her essential tremor. Setting it up was a nightmare because I didn't spend the money for a model with face id. She had to keep touching(but not clicking!) the fingerprint reading button on the side. Training her fingerprint was also a nightmare because of Apple's surprisingly bad decision to require you to click a…

Newer versions of ios actually have an elderly mode, assistive access, in the accessibility settings that might be of help here

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#99

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

reginald78 wrote: post #90
lapcat wrote: post #12

My newer car has a touch screen for the radio channels, and I experience frequent difficulty changing the channels. This becomes impossible when I'm wearing gloves, which of course is often in a Midwest winter.

A guy I work with had some Dodge compact car and he said the touchscreen wouldn't even function (as in no video) until the car warmed up.

> he said the touchscreen wouldn't even function (as in no video) until the car warmed up.

In 1980, imagine a model that had inoperable controls until the engine warmed up. Owners would hammer their dealership until it was resolved.

My take is that buyers are more timid when confronted by excess tech - and less likely to hold carmakers/dealers accountable for a crap product. I think that would feel like meth to an CEO.

Re: Older adults disproportionately hindered by touch screen interfaces (2023)

#100

Post by BeetleB »

Liquix wrote: post #36
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #17

We should NOT have touch screen interfaces in cars. Full stop. If the driver has to divert their gaze from the road to operate e.g. the heating/AC[0], that is a failure of UX sufficiently egregious to keep the car off the road. It is not a toy, it is not a fashion statement, it is a thousand pound chunk of steel that will indiscriminately kill and maim if not operated with care and diligence. [0] This is the complain…

that's the issue with industries like this.. no one asked for touchscreen controls, but they're cheaper and make the manufacturers more money. no one asked for their private conversations to be recorded and sold, but that juicy data is profitable. it's not like people can stop buying cars until the situation improves. joe q public can't be expected to start a grassroots movement and go lobby, he needs to get to work…

> no one asked for touchscreen controls

When they first came out in cars, most people wanted one. Even I did. Then I got one and learned how terrible it is.

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