Previews of software updates designed for people with disabilities | Hacker News Reader

Previews of software updates designed for people with disabilities

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378 pointsArmandGrillet161 comments

This is really good stuff, even for abled people. For example, being able the use the watch one-handed is great if your other hand is occupied, like carrying something.

(The reason I still wear a watch at all is so I can see the time without having to dig the phone out of my pocket and turn it on, which is hopeless while driving.)

Just like although I can hear, I use closed-captioning when I don't wish to disturb others, or when watching a show at high speed (I can read faster than I can understand speech).

Actually, that’s an important point. A person with an occupied hand is still disabled, but it’s a situational disability rather than a temporary or permanent one. Disability is society’s inability to cater to specific needs, rather than a physical state.

I'm not sure how much that definition holds water. Am I disabled if I'm temporarily not able to do cognitive work?

Yes?

You take the word "disabled" literally.

And yes, it's situational. That's what we learned in experience design.

Another example: a parent holding their baby. They "lost" one arm in that situation.

We are in agreement on being technically disabled. But having a disability also has a legal meaning that is separate from that. For instance, we as a society don't call someone disabled for not being good at math, unless something else has been diagnosed that causes that. If you created technology that assists with mental math, we wouldn't call it "a tool for the mathematically disabled".

It's called dyscalculia when severe enough.

So someone who doesn't have dyscalculia, but is just having a bad day and isn't doing math well...we wouldn't say they are still disabled, and we wouldn't call it a situational disability.

We wouldn't call them not good at math either.

Most people wouldn't call it a situational disability because they don't know the term. But it's a common term in relevant fields.

I have seen multiple people throughout my life say "I can't do math today" while referring to their work and then avoid doing computationally-heavy tasks for the day.

"Can't do math today" and "not good at math" are different.

It's "temporarily being not good at math", which is the point.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27213499

Exactly. I'm sitting on the couch now with my laptop on my lap, so I can't walk right now, but I'm not leg disabled.

I'm not partially blind just because I can't see with my eyelids closed.

Perhaps I should have led with those examples.

> For instance, we as a society don't call someone disabled for not being good at math, unless something else has been diagnosed that causes that.

It is part of the definition for intellectual disabilities though. From [1]:

> An individual is generally diagnosed as having an intellectual disability when: (1) the person's intellectual functioning level (IQ) is below 70-75; (2) the person has significant limitations in adaptive skill areas as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical skills; and (3) the disability originated before the age of 18. "Adaptive skill areas" refer to basic skills needed for everyday life. They include communication, self care, home living, social skills, leisure, health and safety, self direction, functional academics (reading, writing, basic math), and work.

Being bad enough at math that it impedes day to day life is not sufficient to qualify for intellectual disability under the ADA but it's one of the major factors.

I think the point is that even capable humans are often in situations where they are functionally disabled - like when they're really exhausted or inebriated or mentally/physically overloaded - and all of these accessibility technologies are helpful in those situations. It's not about the ADA definition but humans in practice.

[1] https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/persons-intellectual-disa...

We are just talking about being bad at math temporarily. Let's take a physicist who is having brain fog for a day. In this case, it would be weird to say they are situationally disabled or disabled at all. I think your term "mentally/physically overloaded" would be closer to what I am speaking of. Not sure about "functionally disabled".

I think it's fair. That's what temp disability is for, workers comp, etc? If I strain my back and I'm bedridden for a few days I think I'm pretty disabled. Similarly, if a vaccine knocks me flat on my butt for a day, people get it, I'm disabled for that day and I need accomodation.

The technical meaning of disability is broader than the legal meaning. The legal meaning is broader than most people would define it.

Using a wrist mounted touch screen is hard if you can't use the other hand. It doesn't matter if it's because the other hand is missing, in a cast, or just holding something. So people in relevant fields talk about permanent, temporary, and situational disabilities.

You don't have to like or use the term. But arguing with people who do won't be productive.

You’re talking about the legal term “disabled”. Some have opted to refer to it as a “situational limitation” or “situational impairment” to distance from the legal term which can have additional implications.

Going back to your point, though, would you say someone with a concussion is situationally disabled? I suffered from a pretty bad concussion last year which definitely caused a lot of brain fog for weeks. At the beginning I could barely think for a few hours. Would you not call this a situational or temporary disability? It’s certainly more than “brain fog for a day”.

As a thought experiment we could consider whether the legal specifications would be necessary if this awareness of situational and widespread ability differences was more established in our culture. What if all doors, everywhere, were easily opened by anyone regardless of whether they were standing, around a certain height, and had free use of their arms?

I think likely we would still need some kind of formal recognition, but it's interesting to ponder.

Trust me, I got super powers during parental leave. Some days I wondered why we need a second hand at all!

Yes, and if we as a society were more accepting of these types of situational disabilities, workplaces would be much healthier.

All situational disabilities? Should workplaces cater to people who are emotionally disabled in some way? Not that I completely disagree with you, I just want to understand what we are defining.

edit - Yes, workplaces should cater to legal disabilities. The question here is if employers should in any way cater to functional disabilities, not disabilities as diagnosed in the DSM. See elsewhere in this thread.

> Should workplaces cater to people who are emotionally disabled in some way?

Not the person you're replying to, but certainly if you e.g. lose a child, your workplace should be sensitive to that and not fire you because you're unable to show up to work that day.

> Should workplaces cater to people who are emotionally disabled in some way?

If they don't want to violate the ADA, yes. For example, major depression can be a disability, and employers are bound by the ADA to not discriminate against people with that disability and to provide them reasonable accommodations.

I think we are confusing the casual term disabled with the legal term disabled. Of course employers should work with legal disabilities. We are talking completely about "functionally disabled" such as your arm being temporarily occupied, or you having a foggy brain and can't to math that day.

Maybe impaired is the better word? Similar to you are not driving while disabled from drinking, but you are driving impaired?

That would be a more accurate term.

Yes, you would be. I don't understand what the importance of the distinction is in terms of being able to use a device like an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch.

Yes.

As a physician, I wish more folks appreciated that “disability” is a property of the relationship between a person and their environment, and can emerge (or disappear) based on changes in that persons capability as well as changes in their environment.

For an obvious example: a patient with reversible heart failure can’t walk without severe shortness of breath today, but they can in three months. Today they need disabled parking; three months from now they do not.

Can we apply "disability" to all abilities, like being hungover and therefore temporarily sensitive to light and sound, or should it apply to specific ones, like being injured and therefore temporarily sensitive to light and sound?

I don't know what a doctor would say here. Just noting that medical jargon sometimes carries moral or legal tones independent of any actual medical distinction.

For instance if you're taking a legal drug that habituates you, they don't like calling you an addict, so you're experiencing cessation syndrome. A change in legal status of the drug would presumably lead to a terminology change.

And I'm not going to revisit DSM fights, but suffice to say, a number of changes made to certain diagnoses over time reveal more about sociopolitical changes than anything having to do with psychiatry.

Your statement regarding legal status of a drug and addiction is wrong. Alcohol and tobacco are legal drugs and you can not only evolve a dependency on them, but if your addicted you’ll be called an addict. The same is true for other legal drugs used as medication, e.g. benzodiazepines or opioids. If you’ve developed physical and/or psychological dependence on such a drug, you might suffer from withdrawal, which is not a different thing than discontinuation, but rather a special case thereof. Addiction and withdrawal compare to dependency and discontinuation like a hoarder compares to someone who relies on the service of a cleaning lady.

I won't argue the point, it very much is not my area. But that is not the understanding I left with when I quizzed my doctor on the topic.

You are really hung up on trying to reconcile that 'disability' has a different meaning in an English dictionary as from a court of law. In different contexts, the word will mean different things. When in doubt, provide additional details to alleviate any confusion - this will vary on a case by case basis.

The meaning of words will always depend on the context they are used in. Even outside of a court of law, there are still people here who disagree that a person with an occupied hand is still disabled.

That seems like something that will shift towards one or the other as society talks more openly about disabilities.

I'd probably call that a "hands busy" situation rather than a disability situation, but some of the same computer features may be helpful for both situations.

In the language of product design and experience, yes you can apply to all abilities. More specifically, all abilities required by your product.

Exactly! I am deaf and when I’m in an environment that’s fully signed, I cease to be disabled. Truly! And those who aren’t signing-aware in such environments become disabled language-wise.

That reminds me of a time I went to the pub with friends after work. I was sat at the table with my back to the rest of the pub. After a while I though "wow it's really quite in here tonight" at which point I turned around to find that the pub was packed, but with deaf people all signing to each other. Turns out it was a monthly deaf meetup at the pub.

It really demonstrated your point. I was quite jealous of their ability to hold a conversation with people all the way across the pub :)

not able = disabled

This is how the W3C defines it for WCAG standards. In part this is because good acessibility helps everyone, whether you realise it or not.

For example, if you are in cold weather you have gloves on which limits your manual dexterity - you can't touch the watch without taking off your gloves, or can't turn the dial - in that situation you have the same dexterity as someone with one hand or limited finger grip. The same goes if you are holding a basket or child.

Alternatively, you have good eye sight and good hearing... for now - unfortunately this probably won't always be the case. But as you age (or if you go to a loud concert) this can change rapidly - having alternate ways of using technology will come in handy in unexpected ways.

Designing for situational disability, ie. I cant use a device in this way right now, will have dramatic impact on users with permanent disabilities - but also helps people with situation disabilities right now.

(Also I'm not sure why this comment is being so viciously downvoted, its a good question.)

I think the votes are because the asker argued so stubbornly with answers they didn't like.

Microsoft’s Inclusive Design Manual gives an excellent high-level view of context-dependent disability:

  “Disability is not just a health problem. It is a
  complex phenomenon, reflecting the interaction between
  features of a person’s body and features of the society
  in which he or she lives.”
  –World Health Organization

https://download.microsoft.com/download/b/0/d/b0d4bf87-09ce-...

iPhone’s accessibility features are great for everybody. I use them all the time, e.g.

- “Display Curtain” switches off only the display while the app is still running. Great for people who do not need the screen for whatever reason: I use this for video-conferencing software. Everybody still can see me, but my display is off, reducing heat and battery usage.

- Display grayscale: I used this in the past to successfully reduce time spent on my phone.

- Voice control: Many do not even categorize that under “Accessibility” anymore

> For example, being able the use the watch one-handed is great if your other hand is occupied, like carrying something.

Surely... it's a requirement to use a watch while one-handed anyway? I'm not familiar with the Apple Watch but I am not sure how you would use a watch with two hands anyway? Can someone explain?

See the "AssistiveTouch for Apple Watch" section of the linked post. This allows you to use the watch with the same hand that is wearing the watch.

The Apple Watch is a smart watch with a touchscreen, it's not just for seeing the hour.

My watch has a button on it for the backlight.

Agreed. As a huge customization fan, accessibility features oftentimes are the only way to get customization options that aren't exposed otherwise. One that comes to mind is setting your display to black and white, disabling animations, etc. Thankfully I don't have any disabilities, but I hate animations and other things like that, so I'm also a huge fan of accessibility features.

>(I can read faster than I can understand speech).

Is this really true, or can you just read faster than most people talk?

For me, at least, reading offers significant advantages to listening when it comes to intake speed. I can trivially rewind if I need to, I can more readily skim content that I understand, fewer comprehension failures due to accent/pronunciation issues, etc.

Captions appear at the same average rate as the speech they're captioning.

its true for me.

I have trouble focusing on speech, so i often end up responding with "what?" then a few seconds later, it makes sense and i can respond. Writing is easy to injest at the rate your brain wants it.

I often notice that I read transcripts significantly faster than the audio time...

That's only natural. That audio time is based on the speed of the speaker's cadence. If it's a live presentation, there tends to be pauses, ums, uhs, deliberate pauses and what nots while the speaker gathers their thoughts or allows a statement to sink in before continuing. If you were to speak at the same pace you were reading, the audience would probably not be able to follow.

I was more thinking about radio talks, but, yeah, a conversation needs even more of those !

Super excited to be able to scroll my grocery list on the watch while holding the basket in the other hand!

A friend who can only see degrees of light turned me onto text-to-speech for listening to epubs. Android’s default was good enough, and Librera, for example, allows for custom pronunciation. Listening by TTS is a way to keep reading while walking to work, for example, and be able to stop and highlight or make notes (which can be done by voice, I just haven’t switched from using my eyes and hands for that).

I accidentally discovered this a year ago. I found that listening to the audiobook and reading along with the ePub was a great way to ingest the material even when in a tired state (since the audiobook keeps playing. Having the ePub also meant I could highlight and export my highlights as usual.

I did try this with iOS built-in TTS but found it was worth the effort to find the audiobook when possible.

This is also a nice way to get used to the rhythm of a second language. Kindle will highlight sync with some audible books (in some markets, not including Canada for some reason!). Reading Kafka in German this way helped me a lot with comprehension since the tone of voice communicates a lot of connotative information.

> The reason I still wear a watch at all is so I can see the time without having to dig the phone out of my pocket and turn it on, which is hopeless while driving.

I also wear a watch, but almost every car has a built-in clock in the dashboard.

> almost every car has a built-in clock in the dashboard

So do mine, but they always show the wrong time.

What kind of car clock isn't easily adjustable?

What kind of car clock is easily adjustable? Serious question.

My (2015) car just has three buttons right next to the clock: H, M, and 00. Pressing/holding H adds hours. Pressing/holding M adds minutes. Pressing 00 rounds to the nearest hour.

Man with one clock knows what time it is. Man with two clocks is never sure.

> Everyday sounds can be distracting, discomforting, or overwhelming, and in support of neurodiversity, Apple is introducing new background sounds to help minimize distractions and help users focus, stay calm, or rest. Balanced, bright, or dark noise, as well as ocean, rain, or stream sounds continuously play in the background to mask unwanted environmental or external noise, and the sounds mix into or duck under other audio and system sounds.

Wow, I never thought of background sounds as something connected to neurodiversity, but TIL.

I definitely never expected Apple to get into the business of white noise apps, but here they are.

I wonder what the quality of these sounds will be, how long they'll loop for? And if all the background noise apps that already exist will continue to operate as they do now, or if they'll be able to integrate with this in order to take advantage of the new mixing/ducking features.

I find myself both calmer and more productive with deep brown noise pumped into headphones. That used to mean pulling up simplynoise.com until they started monetizing it (and the legacy site died with Flash). Now I go to something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3sWyjDFC5Y

Apple has a great record for sound quality, but not so much for configurability. I'm guessing that I'd be a candidate for their "dark noise" setting, but worry somewhat about their frequency selections. I'd rather have an equalizer interface for the noise options.

Did you try https://mynoise.net ? It has a lot of selections, including some "colored noises" that maybe match the one you want. Most of it is still free, I think, although a small donation towards the author is very welcome (if you use it enough and think it's worth).

I think I might have looked at it. But I just want noise in my ears, not noise in my life, and that website is _very_ noisy. I don't want to wade through a sales pitch or an "as seen in" section or someone's life story or testimonials or recommendations or animations or calibrations. I don't want to have to watch video tutorials to learn how to use it. I don't care how much carbon it offsets.

This is precisely why I have "air_conditioner.mp3", the 10 hour extended version, sitting in a folder on every device I own. I can mess around with other options (ambient sounds are cool to change things up), but if I need a nap in a hurry, I'm always prepared.

As someone with tinnitus (constant ringing in ears), this sounds amazing! :)

Ditto. Well my tinnitus is not constant, but of course it tends to ramp up when trying to do things where it's really inconvenient, like sleeping.

I wonder if these sounds will be available as part of the bedtime application (thereby sherlocking most existing applications) as that's by far my biggest requirement for covering sounds, the combination of insomnia and tinnitus makes it rather hard to fall asleep without some sort of rain sound, but short or glitchy rain loops create extremely recognisable patterns my brain latches on to have something to do, which keeps me from sleeping.

A decade ago I remember reading that if you’re in the jungle and an apex predator is spotted, it gets relatively quiet, so from an evolutionary perspective quiet signals danger and induces stress. Sounds reasonable to me, can’t speak to how valid it is though.

That's the opposite of what happens in video games like Subnautica, the dramatic music starts playing when the big baddy is about to attack!

Seems like gradually making the game quieter would be far better for building tension.

I'm trying to thing of cases where it gets quieter when there's more danger but the only one I can think of is The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. When you enter the boss chamber in a dungeon the music is stopped until you perform an action to trigger the boss appearance.

> A decade ago I remember reading that if you’re in the jungle and an apex predator is spotted, it gets relatively quiet, so from an evolutionary perspective quiet signals danger and induces stress. Sounds reasonable to me, can’t speak to how valid it is though.

Many animals will make alarm calls [0] when they sense a predator, sometimes in multi-species groups. A few animals have alarm calls specific to different types of predator such as leopards, snakes and eagles [0]. In my own garden, I can often tell when a cat has entered by the alarm calls emitted by blackbirds and sometimes even squirrels.

So I'm not sure about this quiet jungle thing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_signal#Vervet_monkeys

> Many animals will make alarm calls [0] when they sense a predator, sometimes in multi-species groups.

Some animals have learned that other animals will respond to their alarm calls, and they can use this to scare away those other animals. Here's a bird doing that to get meerkats to run away, leaving the food they just dug up for the bird to take [0].

That isn't the only trick animals play on others with sound. Here's a Steller's jay mimicking the sound of a hawk, the scare other birds away from a feeder [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEYCjJqr21A

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_lEBQtW46o

I'm not sure what exactly they mean by neurodiversity here but as a misanthrope I definitely hate background noise. Before the pandemic I would frequently get distracted by getting irritated at other people nearby talking, chewing, walking, just being around me at all. I also found it helpful to listen to things like forest sounds, rain, and so on sometimes. It does get pretty depressing though when you step back and realize you're listening to artificial nature sounds while staring at a screen under office lights.

> Before the pandemic I would frequently get distracted by getting irritated at other people nearby talking, chewing, walking, just being around me at all.

That sounds like it could point to some form of undiagnosed (possibly mild) sensory processing issues—which are exactly the kind of neurodiversity they are likely referring to.

That could be; as I said in another comment I don't self-diagnose stuff but I could imagine it being the case. Regarding the OP topic, I definitely prefer not to be around, see, or hear other humans unless they're loved ones, so I'll take whatever helps me pretend nobody's around me.

Do you potentially have Misophonia?

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/18/7027840...

I wouldn't rule it out, though I would also be cautious not to self-diagnose things as a non-medical person. I don't generally mind noise in places where I expect it like cafes or clubs.

My colleagues with Misophonia are very sensitive to only specific sounds, and not in all contexts.

I'm not sure there's anything to do even if you were diagnosed with it by a professional. I don't know if there's any treatment, and generally they use the workarounds you alluded to initially in playing noise to mitigate the effects.

Thanks for the info. That's pretty much what I figured. Short of working from home there's not much that could be done, it wouldn't even be fair to ask everyone in the office to be quiet as a mouse just because Joe and Bob have misophonia. Thankfully I love working from home, so hopefully I'll just be able to swing a fully remote situation even if things return to being office-based

My money doesn't seem to fit in any of the slots on my computer...

Apple just keeps knocking it out of the park and into a completely new sports metaphor assistive technology provision, they really do. Any measure, I'm a massive nerd/geek/hacker and I really have looked into alternatives both in the open source and proprietary basis and nobody at all is assistive technology as well as at all right now.

It really is as simple as whenever I have a new iShiny, I pounds on the nearest able-bodied monkey and get them to take total box and connected to Wi-Fi and then it's all me. From then on I don't need any more able-bodied assistance whatsoever with setting up the new device, it's awesome. And whilst it's been a few months, the last time I looked known of the other major players were able to come anywhere close to this level of frictionless setup for quadriplegics like me.

ALSO! ALSO! Let's not forget that this isn't some crappy subset of functions that quadriplegics have to settle for whilst everybody else gets the full fat version of the software. Nope, with very few exceptions pretty much anything an able-bodied person can do with their iShiny I'll be able to do as well. Just a little slower.

Apple, and specifically their approach to accessibility is only one of many reasons I'm able to work, see my family and generally engage with society as well as I currently do.

Also, I quite like the term cripple, differently abled or on a good day Stuart. WTF cares what label you give me, I am much more interested in whether this laptop enables me to do the shopping independently and see my Nieces without having to check with an able-bodied person first.

There's a lot of good stuff here, but I have to say I'm disappointed that they still haven't added anything along the lines of Android's Live Captions feature as a system-wide thing for iOS/macOS.

I generally prefer Apple for their strongly pro-privacy stance, but this is something they're dropping the ball on. After living with this feature in Chrome for a while, it's such a big quality of life improvement that for the first time in years, I'm thinking about jumping to Android even though it would incur some extra costs to do so[1].

I can use Loopback to feed audio into the iOS or web version of Otter.ai on my MBP to fill in some of the gaps where Chrome isn't an option (i.e., FaceTime calls with family and friends), but it increasingly feels like a janky solution and I'd rather have something built in.

[1] - I like having a smartwatch so as not to miss notifications so I'd need to find a good enough solution for that, plus my current hearing aid needs an additional supporting device to stream from an Android phone, so that would run up some additional costs.

Doesn't Voice Over do that?

Nope, voice over does the exact opposite of that, it takes written text and converts it to speech. Live captions take in audio and output text of the speech in that audio.

> I can use Loopback to feed audio into the iOS or web version of Otter.ai on my MBP

I'm assuming you are doing iOS->macOS(w/loopback)->Otter.ai web right? Or can you have loopback feed into iOS and then use Mobile Safari+Otter.ai? I currently use a similar setup with Loopback and otter.ai to transcribe YouTube live videos and then do manual touch up before release. I never expected that other people were using Loopback+Otter.ai, I figured I was a fringe/edge case, but after some googling it looks like it's far from an obscure solution.

Sort of, yeah. My personal laptop is an M1 MBP, so I can run the iOS version of Otter on it, have the system default audio point to LoopBack with the headphone jack as a monitor (which goes to a device that streams to my hearing aid). Then in my video conference software I set up the system default audio as the sound output and my Logitech C920 webcam as the microphone input. Conference software gets what I'm saying, Otter gets what everyone else is saying, I get captions.

Work is a Windows laptop; I could (and do, on my personal Windows desktop) use VoiceMeeter to accomplish the same general approach as described above. But rather than have my security team at work asking me annoying questions, it's easier to run Otter on my iPad and use a TRS-to-TRRS patch cable (I use the Movo CFP-1 from Amazon) to feed that into my iPad... plus using my iPad to display the captions frees up my displays for meeting-related things.

In pre-pandemic times I would also use it for some meetings at work, and meetups.

I think Otter has a fairly significant user base of people using it for accessibility and not just meeting notes, and is seemingly aware of it because they've added features geared to that use case, like the full screen text option with adjustable font sizes.

Very cool! I didn't even think about running iOS apps on the M1, my brain jumped to a physical iOS device but that makes total sense. It probably solves the annoyance of burning a whole browser (by setting it's mic to the fake input from loopback) when you redirect it to app running on the M1. I have Google Chrome Beta installed as my "Otter.ai client" so that I don't have to mess with it on my main Chrome instance. Thanks for sharing your setup, it's very interesting!

Wow, I did not expect the Apple Watch to be able to detect those gestures shown in the video. Impressive.

It mentions using the heart rate sensor. I can imagine it went a little like this: A: "People clenching their fists keeps messing up the heart rate readings!" B: "I wonder if..."

Reminds me of the old hack someone did using the accelerometer in a Macbook hard drive to switch between Spaces:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uvQTTPr9Rw

I don't think there would be that spontaneous of heart rate change due to clenching a fist but I would expect the sensors to get a large jump from baseline due to skin, veins, etc. deforming from clenching.

Seconded, and I can't wait to try these out - case in point that accessibility options really are for everybody!

Yea that's really neat. Thanks to GP I actually went and checked out the video. Clenching and pinching, if that smooth, seem like they'd be less error prone than trying to use the tiny touch screen on the Apple Watch half the time.

Exactly accessibility really benefits everyone. I currently use the floating home button on my iPhone even though I have no physical problems with using the volume and power buttons to take a screenshot, I like using the home button better.

The watch gestures seem useful whenever you have a handful of groceries and need to answer a call.

Supposedly the original motivation for the taptic/fake home button in iPhones was they noticed a lot of people had turned on assistive touch just because they were worried about their home buttons wearing out.

I always felt that single arm control of Apple watch was the future because the way it ties up both hands felt anachronistic(the hand your watch is on is doing nothing and is constrained while your other hand interacts with the watch, making it less liberating than a phone) but couldn't imagine how this would be solved. Bravo Apple on this brilliant solution.

There’s a startup [1] that I don’t think has shipped yet, but they have a great idea about using nerve conductance sensors to use hand gestures to control the watch. Looks pretty exciting

[1] https://www.mudra-band.com/

Oof, at a glance some of the gestures and ideas look pretty similar to what Apple just launched. I wouldn't be surprised if this either fizzles out, or gets nerfed by Apple for competing with built-in OS features.

It's possible the extra hardware in the watch band makes it work much better, which would be cool! But it's hard to beat built-in. And I presume relying on those comm ports in the watch band connector and watchOS functionality is... risky.

> With VoiceOver, users can explore more details about an image with descriptions, such as “Slight right profile of a person’s face with curly brown hair smiling.”

I'm imagining some older family members, whose sight isn't so great anymore, listening to descriptions of old photos being read to them. That's stunning. Wow.

I don't have an iPhone myself but do use hearing aids. I'm glad the big tech companies are paying attention to such details. There are a lot of little details of the hearing aid bluetooth experience that could be improved by all manufacturers. I just want instantaneous switching between multiple bluetooth devices.

That's something Apple is doing already with their bluetooth W1 chip. Unfortunately only among their devices.

I wish this feature would be adopted by many other manufacturers. And that generally, the bluetooth pairing was faster.

I've been hearing about Bluetooth LE Audio standard which should help a lot but its just started to be offered in hearing aids. Right now you have to choose between the Apple approach, Google approach or standard bluetooth each with their own limitations.

It does not work as you'd imagine. It doesn't work for anyone - particularly switching from ios to macos as the currently playing device. It works the other way around fine, and even between iOS and iPadOS. But not iOS to macOS. Other headsets that simply support connecting to multiple devices at a time end up providing a better experience since you can switch between devices easier than with Airpods switching. I'm unsure about how the Airpods Max performs but I'm willing to bet it's the same way.

I think you're referring to automatic switching, which is a much newer feature. That indeed is broken iOS to macOS.

But the instantaneous switching works fine in my experience and has since the original AirPods.

As far as I understand, Apple laptops still mostly (all?) use Broadcom chipsets for Bluetooth, instead of Apple's own W1 chipset that includes the enhanced connectivity features.

I'm not sure why, instant handoff between a laptop and a phone seems like such a natural workflow for anyone who does a mix of phone calls and videoconferencing.

A few years back I tried to set up Android’s TalkBack for my 90 year old blind grandmother, but unfortunately it was impossible to use. Even as someone who’s very familiar with the Android UI (and can see what I’m doing) I found it very difficult. I’ve heard iPhones are a million times better for blind users, but is their accessibility technology good enough that I could teach my grandmother to use them?

The problem is that she has very little tech experience, so things are confusing. Imagine being 90 and blind and feeling your way around a brand new user interface, full of acronyms and words you don’t understand. What’s a SIM or a VPN or a JPG? Then again, all she needs to do is send texts, Google things, and make calls. Taking pictures would also be nice.

If anyone here has a similar experience helping an old blind person with tech, I’d love to hear it.

> If anyone here has a similar experience helping an old blind person with tech, I’d love to hear it.

I'm afraid I don't, but you might find this helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrUMYePxzfM

An Alexa or similar device might be a good option. I got one for my nearly blind grandma and she got some use out of it. There's a learning curve but I think it's a lot less steep than using a phone OS.

One time I broke my iPhone screen but the digitizer was still working so I used it like a blind person would for a few weeks. It's definitely far ahead of android or anything else in that regard.

Check out the older videos of Tommy Edison on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/c/TommyEdisonXP). He's been blind since birth and put out a few videos many years ago on how he uses an iPhone.

I've seen blind people do amazing things with an iphone. The girl I remember played it almost like a flute with the iphone held up to her ear.

i just to say Apple is one of the only companies that I know of is super serious about providing first class features to people with disabilities. Other companies do provide some of them but they are not as well thought out as Apple

That is a whole other level. Impressive - the watch stuff kinda reminds me of the rotor control in a way where you can activate system actions and swipes.

I'm impressed and also a bit disturbed by the vast and widening gulf between commercial OS UI/UX (especially Apple) and anything remotely FOSS. At this point I'd say FOSS UI/UX is at least 20 years behind Apple.

Thankfully Android (without Google stuff) is technically FOSS.

At first I snickered about how your comment implied that they were at par 20 years ago when the year of desktop Linux was upon us.

But desktop Linux with GNOME 1.x and 2.x were actually pretty consistent any enjoyable to use. It was still different enough from the early unpolished OSX releases, but had its own strengths and some nice touches. OSX 10.0 was arguably a regression from NeXT and OpenStep by then seemed pretty close to NeXTStep in terms of user experience.

Ironically as GNOME openly pursued a more Apple-like approach of reduced configuration and “smart defaults”, OSX just seemed to pull ahead. They couldn’t out-Apple Apple and yet GNOME sucked up so many resources and default installs from corporate Linux that other environments couldn’t really compete.

I probably also just got too old to unironically run Enlightenment.

i'm not hard of hearing so maybe i'm just missing something, but what's the point of the signtime service? wouldn't a text chat be a whole lot easier?

Written English is quite different from ASL. For a person who was born deaf and learned to sign from the start, text chat would not be easier.

This is an acknowledgment that sign is a distinct language and, the same way that Apple Stores are localized in different countries, this localizes the Apple Store experience for DHH folks

In addition to what you just said, it's significantly faster to sign than it is to type/text, not to mention the nuances of face-to-face communication that can get lost in a text-based world!

That’s interesting. Since I type far quicker than I can speak, I would have definitely expected typing to be quicker than signing.

You might be unaware that it's not spelling out individual words letter by letter. It's closer to a "pictographic" language (likely there's a better term, please correct me) where a sign will stand for a concept, and also have a flexible interpretation depending on the context, including the signs you use preceding/following it.

Its depth is quite fascinating -- ASL truly is its own language, not just "English with your fingers". (Though I should add I don't know it myself, this is just based on discussion with an interpreter friend.)

That makes sense! It's not a topic I'm familiar with, but seems like it would be interesting to delve into.

> I type far quicker than I can speak

Are you sure about that? People hold (enthusiastic) conversations at 160 WPM, and the the fastest typists in the world average around 180 WPM.

Maybe? I based my conclusion on the experiences of sitting in a room together with other people, but being able to converse with them quicker via instant message on our laptops.

Now that I think more about it, maybe the raw speed is not quicker, but the quantity of ideas conveyed per unit of time is higher due to being able to scroll back and forth in text for the listener, as opposed to wasting time clarifying mumblings or repeating what one said. Especially in a group setting where you do not have to take turns speaking.

Do you really? Average conversational WPM is 150, from a quick search. I don't believe many people can type "far quicker" than that; most people likely can't even hit half that.

Im in the ~90s, but as I wrote in other comment, it feels like I can convey information quicker via text.

This is because you are translating your words to fit the medium. It’s a reduction. This is exactly what DHH folks have to do, except it’s to practically a different language.

In an ideal world, it seems to me like everyone needs a different interface with a computer, whether it's a website or an application (remember those?).

Waving a wand, I'd take something like a banking website (let's say Bank of America as an example) and strip out all the cruft. A text-only interface that (maybe) just looks like a simple early-version-of-Windows application. I'll grant that Amazon and eBay require the ability to put up images, Vanguard and Fidelity most certainly do not.

What you could do then is to make them all alike, it's not like these sites are particularly different. Maybe the equivalent of an RSS feed app could run the lot.

The thing is, a deaf or blind person could ask for the same thing just with their own particular abilities in mind.

/oldmanrant

Eye-Tracking Support for iPad. I hope with Apple's track record of usability it will be an improvement over the existing solutions. I used Dynavox camera bolted on Microsoft Surface and their proprietary software and it's painful. Using browser is an impossible task.

It's really odd sometimes how much they focus on disability features, while also completely ignoring localization in entire countries.

My guess is that they aren’t comfortable shipping any localization unless they can make it perfect, and they don’t have that yet.

What kind of a nonsense reason is this. If they actually did the work it'd be just as good as any other locale they do support.

Why can Microsoft and Google offer excellent localization virtually everywhere, and Apple can't? Apple too poor, can't hire enough people? No. So what is it?

1) I wonder if it's a cost-benefit analysis regarding relative market sizes?

2) I'm genuinely curious which countries you perceive as having been "ignored" -- I find 39 different .lproj folders in the /System/Library/CoreServices/Resources folder. (Of course that's on macOS and not the iPhone.)

Counting .lproj files tells you nothing. I technically have a keyboard layout for my country (although it supports no autocomplete or swipe). No translated UI, no dictation, no Siri, no nothing. But I'm sure that keyboard layout gets me an .lproj file.

“Nothing here that can’t be done on Linux, with better customization.”

I get that there are reasons why people would want nothing to do with any of this and just objects to Apple because the desktop doesn’t ship with a tiling window manager.

But to me this stuff illustrates why we actually need companies like Apple.

Who are you quoting?

A common archetype.

Good updates for accessibility.

Q: Why do they call it "limb differences" instead of what I learned it a decade ago as "disabilities". Is "disabilities" considered offensive?

Some people don’t like being labeled as “disabled”, because that may have the connotation that they’re not able to do as much as an “abled” person.

The page is literally titled "Apple previews powerful software updates designed for people with disabilities."

I assume this is simply being more specific.

No; "disabilities" is insufficiently specific. The features that Apple is adding to Apple Watch wouldn't help a blind user, for example -- they're specifically targeted at users with limb differences (like a missing or abnormally formed arm) which would prevent them from touching one wrist with the opposite hand.

Hello friends, I created a startup project to get jobs for people with mental disabilities, with him I was able to be interviewed by two of the largest universities in the world, I am striving to improve my English, the project is constantly updated, if you are interested https : //bit.ly/3oFyJ63, Instagram: vitorfebraga

Fix keyboard accessibility first, instead of releasing PR bullet points.

A good addition is still a good addition.

Ironic; in Norway this introduction of eye tracing on iPad could be bad for those who has severe disabilities, because when it is easily accessible in normal stores you will no longer get them funded as a helping aid, and you then have to pay from your own pocket. This forward the burden on the families and dividing the society.

The whole UI should be in a transparent hierarchical structure (the DOM? XML? Lisp?) and I should be able to apply any projection or operation on it. Context sensitive bold, or make click targets larger, or script things.

The extensions that the vendor makes, anyone else should be able to make. I'd like to put a soft border around whatever element currently has focus. I'd like to configure my own tab order. I'd like click-lock, drag, unlock, drop so that stuff doesn't magically disappear during a botched drag-and-drop operation.

The desktop UI was a nice hack-demo, but it really isn't that good, anywhere.

This is not possible to do while also having a UI that is pleasant to use and looks good. Nor will it get you a UI that is easy to use for disabled people.

What you get is a UI that is average-bad for everyone.

> What you get is a UI that is average-bad for everyone.

I.e., every Linux UI ever. I say that as someone who has used Linux exclusively for ~10 years, for all of the time that I have had my own computer.

That’s not a bad description of how VoiceOver works. Apps export a description of their UI called the accessibility hierarchy.

There are a few UI editing features like high contrast and dynamic type, but not many because of how hard it is to keep the UI usable and allow those changes.

For a moment I misread the headline here as "Apple prevents powerful software updates designed for people with disabilities," and thought, "Oh for Christ's sake, how did App Store review go off the rails this time".

Apple putting disability support into consumption devices is excellent. The current approach of trying to boil the ocean - by modifying the world rather than helping disabled people handle it better - is a massive waste of resources and results in a poorer world for disabled people.

> These next-generation technologies showcase Apple’s belief that accessibility is a human right and advance the company’s long history of delivering industry-leading features that make Apple products customizable for all users.

I read this more like: We saturated the laptop market. Then we saturated the smartphone market. Then we saturated the smart watch market. So how the heck are we supposed to grow revenue? So someone smart came up with the idea: Disabled people!

I sure applaud that they eventually cared, but I don't think their PR is honest.

Apple certainly doesn’t have the dominant marketshare with desktops or laptops; even in the US, they’re about 40-45%.

Apple’s been advocating for accessibility for decades; this isn’t new.

iOS has been the most usable UI for people with various disabilities since it came out.

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