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Apple unveils new accessibility features

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Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#91

"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?

Planes? Trains? If you haven't used these motion dots, they actually do work wonders. My wife gets motion sickness and could barely ever look at her phone when riding as a passenger in the car, even just to type in directions. With the motion dots she does just fine.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s meant to be criticism. It’s an interesting piece of information that gives a peek into how those with vision impairment consume content. There’s nothing wrong with it; but it was enlightening to consider the experience for those of us who have not been forced to.

Seems like I brought my own negativity into this...

I don't think you did.

Some blind people listen to things at superhuman speeds, but not all blind people. Using a normal reading speed is a sensible choice for an ad trying to appeal to blind people since you don't want to intimidate those who don't use superhuman speeds.

Going from that to "heh a sighted person made this because it's normal speed" is simply incorrect.

It was the sort of statement an HNer might make to showcase some trivia they have about some other group, but they oversold it.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#93
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe just don't wear them in a car? Why not?

Because the more we reject our shared reality and substitute it with each our own, the less humane we become.

God forbid a person rejects the shared reality of a boring 12 hour flight and substitutes it with their own. Some real deep thoughts here

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#94
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the more we reject our shared reality and substitute it with each our own, the less humane we become.

God forbid a person rejects the shared reality of a boring 12 hour flight and substitutes it with their own. Some real deep thoughts here

I’ve met some very interesting people on flights. I’ve done some great work. I’ve had some great ideas.

Don’t be so scared of variety. You just keep subjecting yourself to more of the same. The unending familiarity makes you dull.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> It's not rare among blind developers

It's not rare among the blind in general.

Unless you're completely technologically illiterate, the kind of person who has no idea how to install an app or sign up for an online account, you're probably doing something of the sort.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I listen to a lot of podcasts and listen at 1.5-2.0 speed and it’s to the point that I literally cannot stand listening to 1.0 speed anymore as they go too slowly (depending on the content of course).

Same. Returning to 1x speed makes people sound (to my 2x-abused ears) drunk and slurring their works. If I want to listen to something slowly and carefully, I will just about tolerate 1.25x.

What really frustrates me is watching/listening to discussion of music, because I am forced to listen to the talking at 1x because the music sounds wrong (and is wrong) at anything other than 1x.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#97
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the audio speed can be adjusted. Whether that control you see visually is actually accessible to a blind user is a different matter entirely. Further, it maxes out at 2x, but a blind person would typically screen read at the equivalent of 3-6x.

Huh, 2x is low even sometimes for sighted people. Related, it seems like YouTube recently paywalled speed increase beyond 2x. Another way in which it's not cheap to lose sight, I guess.

> Another way in which it's not cheap to lose sight, I guess.

Seems like it would be a win-win to have a user setting to opt out of video in exchange for ungating that feature.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I listen to a lot of podcasts and listen at 1.5-2.0 speed and it’s to the point that I literally cannot stand listening to 1.0 speed anymore as they go too slowly (depending on the content of course).

I'm so glad YouTube and other podcast players have moved to support 3.0 speed. As I get comfortable with one, I move it up some. For things like sports and "did you know" content, I can go 2.5 if I'm not multitasking. For technical content, sometimes I'm stuck at 1.0.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#99
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ho-ly cow. That is very impressive. I'm not even sure what to say, but discoveries like this are why I use hackernews, I'd never have known this otherwise.

To be fair, the acoustics of the room that talk was given in are... not too great, to put it mildly.

I can easily understand Eloquence (the speech synthesizer he's using) at that speed, but I struggled a bit with this one.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

I listen to a lot of podcasts and listen at 1.5-2.0 speed and it’s to the point that I literally cannot stand listening to 1.0 speed anymore as they go too slowly (depending on the content of course).

Something that the Overcast podcast player does (and probably others) is silence removal, which in some ways is even better than the raw speedup.
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