Apple to add fresh accessibility features for 2025 Accessibility matters to everyone. If you think it doesn't: it will. Apple builds in some pretty good tools, and they're getting better. Here's why it's important. As we write, it is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Apple's annual developer conference is looming: WWDC25 is in a few weeks. (The Register is not one of the …
This. As I age I find it necessary to wrestle with tiny/vanishing scroll bars, tiny buttons and text. Some of the worst offenders are games developers, I wont even buy many of the latest games on PS5 because not only do they lack accessibility features they don't even provide varying difficulty levels, assuming all players are young, nimble fingered and with fast reflexes. Sometimes an otherwise decent game is brought to a grinding halt part way in due to a compulsory unbeatable boss or a half-baked mini-game which effectively acts as a filter to stop anyone with even minor disabilities from going any further.
There's also gratuitous developer idiocy like scrollbar thumbs that disappear after a while bullshit. Fuck that.
The REASON you have a scrollbar thumb is so you can look over and see how far down the window/document you are! And if it's gone, you can't do that! Fucking retards.
I played HALO on the original Xbox because of the original Xbox controller that was actually big enough that I could play for an hour without pain in my hands.
And that was nearly 25 years ago in 2001, so I was 25 at the time.
But NOOOOOO, people made jokes about the large controller so Microsoft got rid of it. I remember going to GameStop and buying a half dozen of them, and when they all finally stopped working, I stopped playing console games.
> Sometimes an otherwise decent game is brought to a grinding halt part way in due to a compulsory unbeatable boss or a half-baked mini-game which effectively acts as a filter to stop anyone with even minor disabilities from going any further.
Sing it. I don't know if my complete lack of coordination is a "minor disability" but I've been there. When a game goes from "solve puzzle" to "solve puzzle in 30 seconds" halfway through... fuck that.
"solve puzzle in 30 seconds"
I was enjoying playing "Atomic heart" on the PS5 but it had a mini-game half way in based on the Nokia snake game. It required great dexterity with the left thumb and fast reflexes. I just couldn't respond fast enough to stop the snake going off screen before it grew to the required length. It literally brought the game to an end for me. What a ridiculous way for an otherwise great game to end up being abandoned.
An additional issue I face as on older gamer is my fingers seize up after a little while with intense activity. Some boss fights are far too long and my hands can't cope.
100% agree with this, not just from the gaming point of view ONLY but because it highlights a major ongoing issue.
UI design is NO LONGER about making the interface with the user BETTER, in terms of logical design that everyone can understand or usability etc, it appears to be a 'game' to show off how clever you can be creating a 'new' way of interfacing with the user.
Usability seems to be a dirty word, no-one seems to test how the 'new' interface works with a cross-section of users with varying levels of dexterity, visual acuity or ability to decypher icons/graphics (used instead of words).
Just because some UI designs/paradigms are old and well used does not make then old-fashioned/useless, sometimes 'old' ideas are valid because they are tried & tested by time and they are 'known' to a large number of people by experience.
'New' also has to be 'valid' ... the 'scrollbar thumb' disappearing act is an example of completely missing the point of why the thing exists in the first place.
Please please could the people who work in this arena take a little time to look back at what was and how it came to be.
Stop reinventing things that 'work well' ... they were well thought out, at the time, with specific objectives which were met; therefore unless you are improving the paradigm while still meeting those objectives, what you are really doing is making things worse !!!
:)
I don't feel that my dexterity has suffered despite being 51, and I'm quite used to touchpads... but I'm finding the scrolly things on Linux Cinnamon to be stupidly narrow. There's a way to make them bigger, but it only seems to make window scrolls bigger, not the ones in windows for lists of stuff. Of course, half the time they're semi-hidden anyway. I don't get the logic of trying to hide functional scroll bars while a good chunk of screen is taken up with a permanent fixed menu bar. <shrug>
Whilst the iPhone has good hearing aid/cochlea implant support, largely keeping up with developments in sound technology and the Bluetooth communication protocols necessary. Surely, the Mac could benefit from these.
Also given the developments in camera technology, we should be seeing some level of sign language support by now, given MS managed to get the Xbox 360 + Kinect to have some support for American Sign Language. My preference would be to utilise an iPhone/ipad as a paired camera and display - this mirroring a set up we frequently use, where someone is sharing their screen with a BSL interpreter, who then uses the second channel for signed communications.
Another area not well supported is dyslexia. With Windows there is MyStudyBar from CALL Scotland ( https://www.dyslexiauk.co.uk/free-assistive-technology-tool-mystudybar/ ). Although I have yet to find a tool that is embedded in 365 so that when a user logs into 365 from any PC they get their preferred screen settings.
Shuddered reading that.
A hunk of metal every 30mm (assuming arm [humerus] and forearm [radius+ulna]) more metal than man.
Wasn't that long ago that such an injury would necessitate amputation.
Not-disabled-yet is an excellent way of putting it especially in the more developed nations where an extended life expectancy and the inevitability of the degenerative diseases that accompany old age make this the rule.
Web site accessibility for the visually impaired (without even considering other disabilities) has deteriorated in the last decade to the point that they commonly breach regulatory requirements.
Any of us "fortunate" to live long enough are almost certain to suffer from some form of visual impairment. (Cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, retinal tearing/detachment...)
One of the reasons I attempt to use whenever possible non online methods to manage utilities, official communication, bank, etc etc.
Always tempted when some droid quips: "there's an app for that and it's soooo easy [for me] for you to use instead," to reply that where I would put said app there clearly would be insufficient illumination for anyone to use an app.
There's no reason why old themes couldn't be an option in newer Windows apart from marketing. Windows XP allowed a Windows 2000 look but Windows 11 doesn't even allow you to configure the font without messing around with registry files and it's not guaranteed to work everywhere.
I had cataract surgery 2 months ago. It was an interesting life change.
So for 50 years, I've been VERY nearsighted in my right eye, on the order of 20/150-20/180. However, I have had triple magnification up close, which was handy for things like broken circuit traces and hairline solder cracks. "What, you can't see that crack?"
But then I got cataracts and they replaced the lens with a plastic implant. So now I have "normal" vision. It's weird to be able to recognise people without my glasses, but I do miss the really good close-up vision working on my bike and my LEGO.
Boy, did it take some getting used to. Still not sure if I'm going to have my left eye done as well, yet.
Ha! or 'Me Too' I've had both cataracts done, and at distance can now see far better than I ever could before - even with glasses. I don't do any board level electronics work these days, so it's not too much of a problem having to wear reading/computer glasses.
Incidentally, it was the science master at school who realised (when was 13) I was short-sighted - he noticed I could clearly see details at very close quarters.
That combined with my mum dragging me along when she visited severely disabled and hospitalised people is probably what prompted me to concentrate on accessibility for the software project I work with.
My situation was somewhat similar except I had near normal vision in my right eye but the left focused about 5 inches out. When cataracts developed, the left eye was done first. Great for distance. But I needed to carry reading glasses around pretty much everywhere. So when the right lens developed cataracts, I asked for a closer focus than normal. I think the optician tried to comply because my new right lens does focus closer than the left. But not as much as I'd like. You can try asking them for a closer focus on you other eye. Maybe it'll work for you.
> Wasn't that long ago that such an injury would necessitate amputation.
I am acutely aware of this, yes.
I have only approximately 20º of rotation left in the forearm now. If palm flat downwards were 0º, then I can move it from about 20º to about 40-50º and that's it. My hand won't lie flat on a desk any more, and it also can't stand on edge perpendicular to the desktop either.
It is better than no longer having a right hand, though.
No doubt you've already looked into vertical mice and already have one if it helps you, but for everyone else reading I can't praise them highly enough, thanks to one of those and a mechanical keyboard with linear switches my RSI is gone as far as I can tell. Obviously if I go back to a shitty keyboard and normal horizontal mouse then no doubt it'll come back.
Worst mouse I tried ever was the Apple magic mouse. It's like that was designed to screw with your carpal tunnel.
> you've already looked into vertical mice
No way.
It won't go completely vertical but more to the point there are 3 steel plates, with half a dozen bolts each, right under the skin. Resting that gently on a hard surface is painful.
Yes.
A relative lives with us with mobility issues (we do some unpaid, "free time" care duties, as do so many people) and we have things like stairlift, grab handles in lots of places to make walking about easier etc.
A few years ago I badly damaged my ankle on a hiking trip and got a temporary disability experience* - the house modifications proved extremely useful, it would have been agony for me to ascend the stairs to our room without using stair lift & grab handles dotted around made getting about a lot easier & less painful.
* beyond the "normal" age related gradual physical deterioration that others have already mentioned & each time I go for an eye test wondering if I will lose my driving licence** (also another person who's gaming has been affected!)
** one eye already falls below the requirements, matter of rate of decline of the "less bad" eye
> A hunk of metal every 30mm (assuming arm [humerus] and forearm [radius+ulna]) more metal than man.
How it looked this spring:
https://imgur.com/gallery/metalwork-arm-2-years-post-accident-6MDCqLv
For some reason when I say “colour”, Siri transcribes it every single time as “Kulla”, complete with the capital letter. Is that even a word? It’s certainly not a word or name I have ever deliberately used.
Whilst ranting on the topic, indulge me with a related one… I live just outside a town whose name ends with “-berg”. I can have a route to it open in Apple Maps on my phone, and yet when I dictate a message to SWMBO along the lines of “nearly home, just approaching ~-berg”, Apple transcribes it as “-burgh” - again, every single time.
So I don’t quite share the author’s sunny appraisal of Apple’s assistive features, no.
Kulla (god), god of builders in the Mesopotamian mythology. He is responsible for the creation of bricks and restoration of temples.
And probably Apple Stores these days.
"So I don’t quite share the author’s sunny appraisal of Apple’s assistive features, no."
I think you're thinking about the wrong thing. Speech recognition has lots of flaws, and likely always will although I've seen significant improvements. But that's just one tool and assistive use is just one of the things it's for. People without disabilities use that feature all the time. There are a lot of features which are specifically for use by people with disabilities in most operating systems, and, for example, only one of them in IOS is related to speech recognition, namely the feature used to control the device by voice for those who cannot or find it difficult to use the touchscreen to do it, and those users also have switch control as an option, where they use a separate controller which they can more easily interact with to control the device. Features meant for people who have trouble seeing, hearing, or speaking are completely unrelated to this, so the failure of a speech recognition model wouldn't be useful in judging the quality of any of those.
Meanwhile, I'm not sure where they get those models, but it's likely that they, like a lot of operating systems, license it from a company that specializes in making them*, so they can't actually improve that part easily. Who knows, as Apple is big enough that it might have brought that in. Microsoft bought Nuance, one of those specialized companies, so they're presumably using that, so Apple could have done a similar thing.
* It's a little easier now with neural networks and cheap computer power to keep throwing at them, but for a while, they employed a lot of people who were really focused on linguistics and acoustics. Building a model for one language was hard. Doing it for the thirty languages most operating systems want to provide was extremely hard. Specializing was the most logical way to make it feasible, since the work could be spread out among lots of users.
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