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Comment by RyJones | Hacker News Reader

I characterize this as "all PMs have perfect eyes and skin". The first iteration of the Microsoft Surface featured a micro SD slot that was unusable if you had anything less than perfect, pliable finger nails. I cracked a nail so many times using that slot I gave up.

Current generation Apple designers clearly have amazing vision: part numbers on light grey on white in microscopic fonts.

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At my employer (very large company) whose product is not an app (but our apps are used by a lot of our customers you don't have to) we do accessibility for our mobile apps and web, but only for sightless people, who rarely if ever use our apps due to the nature of our business. However the number of limited sight people, including older folks and those with visual limitations who can still see, are a large number of our app using customers; sadly we ignore them in design. I too have floaters and have trouble with low contrast text and our app designs are a bit hard to see. In a previous job our designers insisted on medium gray text on light gray backgrounds: I actually upped the contrast in my implementations from what was requested, and no one ever noticed thankfully.

Imagine if Uber did the same, support voiceover for their driver app (like why would a sightless person drive for Uber!) but ignore those with somewhat limited vision or are using the app in a fixed mount while driving, but are otherwise fine with driving vision.

The small fonts are a good point (so to speak). It can be hard to distinguish some letters from numbers, etc. on something like a Windows ID licensing code. Don't get me started on micro USB connectors...always with non-contrasting colors of course. God only knows how an elderly person deals with their CAPTCHA test o' the day.

My highly developed sense of old fartdom really comes out when dealing with modern cars with touchscreen displays.

I've had a lot of trouble entering the Windows serial numbers when installing Windows. The B and 8 look alike, ditto for O and 0. I've had to use a magnifying glass on it.

Apple's online documentation pages have also tended to be light grey fonts on white. My eyes would ache trying to read them. I find their choices baffling. It's like they were so focused on design they forgot about people simply wanting to read it.

1 and I / 5 and S are other ones that can be tricky. I'm surprised if Windows is still using them in serial codes - I thought that was something the shareware community had learned not to do years ago. Maybe some of this knowledge is getting lost.

I've had a lot of trouble entering the Windows serial numbers when installing Windows. The B and 8 look alike, ditto for O and 0. I've had to use a magnifying glass on it.

This kind of thing is a pet peeve of mine. So many codes require digits and letters these days -- why not just digits?! It would be so much more user friendly, especially when using a smartphone keyboard.

Yes, I'd rather just use a longer password that is easier to type.

> Current generation Apple designers clearly have amazing vision: part numbers on light grey on white in microscopic fonts

Tip: take a photo and view it in the photo app on your phone or desktop. It is often much easier to read then. If it is not, it can often be made so by playing with the editing options.

This also often works with things like power bricks that sometimes have the specs "printed" in raised plastic with no coloring to distinguish it from the rest of the case.

I set triple-click on my iphone to magnifier.

Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Magnifier -> On

Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut -> Magnifier

(of course those settings are somewhat inaccessi... well you know...)

This - should be a card in the box on top of the iPhone explaining magnifier. So incredibly useful!

I think accessibility should be part of the setup menu.

Maybe even required by law - imagine a small-fine-print license agreement during setup that you cannot read.

Another similar trick: you can use the zoom feature to dim the screen below the normal threshold. Set the zoom level to zero and then set the zoom filter to low light. I use this as my triple click, and it's great for reading in absolute dark without ruining your night vision.

There's a "reduce white point" accessibility option specifically for this if you want finer control over how dim it goes. I use it if I ever need to look at my phone with a migraine.

This is no tip, this is something I guess everyone has ended doing out of necessity. I take a picture and max the contrast and zoom, but I shouldn't need to do that just because legible print is not fashionable.

>Apple designers clearly have amazing vision

Apple can be bad for this. Unfortunately the spindly little grey fonts floating in a sea of white or grey seems to be part of a broader design fashion at the moment. (Of course, I don't rule out that Apple played a role in kicking off this fashion.)

My current favourite example is the MDN page covering text contrast — https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/U... — which violates the rules it states. (As does practically all of MDN, but particularly the confetti-factory code samples.)

“You’re looking at it wrong.”

I returned a set of airpods. We both struggled to get the serial number of those things

> Current generation Apple designers clearly have amazing vision: part numbers on light grey on white in microscopic fonts.

OMG, this has to be the worse fashion decision they've made. Let's use this thin, tiny, light-grey font to write over the shiny white plastic. Fuck you Apple.

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