4 ms·

It seems pretty obvious that accessibility is always going to require extra thought. Some people are paralyzed from the neck down, but we still have keyboards.

It seems pretty obvious that accessibility is always going to require extra thought. Some people are paralyzed from the neck down, but we still have keyboards. In any case, why do you think that using gripping as a UI action implies that you'd need a strong grip to use it?

maldusiecle 10y ago
Sure, it's always going to require extra thought, but why create problems when you don't need to? There's this entire train of reasoning that seems to be that a rich interface is one that places as many demands as possible on the human body. That thinking will inevitably lead to problems of this type. If grip isn't necessary, why make it necessary? I could have made a number of objections of this type to the article, but this seems the most obvious and understandable one.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  why create problems when you don't need to? I don't think it's fair to make non-disabled individuals use a less productive interface, just as it's not fair to prevent disabled individuals from using the interface of their choice.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    How is gripping more productive? I'm not disabled, but much prefer grippless handles because they are easier/simpler to use.
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      I was speaking in more general terms, but I'll provide some examples. I grip my mouse to use its side buttons to navigate forward/backward in a web browser. Human hands are generally good at holding things, and flat touchscreens/trackpads aren't very holdable. Power tools, steering wheels, gear shifts, volume knobs -- all examples of things that are gripped.
- mistercow 10y ago
  > There's this entire train of reasoning that seems to be that a rich interface is one that places as many demands as possible on the human body I disagree completely. The line of reasoning is "what actions can we perform that have the highest bandwidth, and lowest cognitive load?" And various forms of manual manipulation, like gripping, are an excellent avenue of exploration when answering that question.
SiVal 10y ago
It seems pretty obvious that accessibility is always going to require extra thought Actually, I think this extra thought could help everyone by treating disabilities as just special cases of the general idea that different people prefer different input/output devices and having apps (mostly) stop processing low-level input (keystrokes, pixel hit testing) and switch to handling more abstract "primitives". The OS would have a set of more abstract primitives: enter text, zoom in, zoom out, rotate, 3d move, 3d rotate, select item, select 2d region, select 3d region, deselect, grab, cancel, undo, etc. You, the user, would need a set of I/O devices that provided one or more implementations of each primitive in the checklist. One user would send an "undo" to an app with a click of the tongue, another with a hand gesture, another by pressing the ESC key, but the app just gets an "undo" event from the OS. For 2d region select, for example, one would use a joystick, another uses voice, another uses eye movement. The app doesn't process pixel hit testing to do its own region select, it lets the OS tell it what region of the 2d surface was selected. The app makers don't make the app "accessible" themselves, they just make it respond to the checklist of higher-level primitives. You could provide at least the core functionality of most apps by this means after which an app could possibly add some lower-level processing in the form of "shortcuts". When I'm forced to use a watch interface away from my keyboard, I am in a sense "disabled". When driving in my car with eyes on the road, I am "disabled". I'm not a gamer, so relative to a gamer with mad joystick skillz, I am "disabled". Well, fine, just change the approach to software interaction to a more abstract type of interaction that treats us all as being variously abled.

maldusiecle 10y ago

Sure, it's always going to require extra thought, but why create problems when you don't need to? There's this entire train of reasoning that seems to be that a rich interface is one that places as many demands as possible on the human body. That thinking will inevitably lead to problems of this type. If grip isn't necessary, why make it necessary? I could have made a number of objections of this type to the article, but this seems the most obvious and understandable one.

nitrogen 10y ago
why create problems when you don't need to? I don't think it's fair to make non-disabled individuals use a less productive interface, just as it's not fair to prevent disabled individuals from using the interface of their choice.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  How is gripping more productive? I'm not disabled, but much prefer grippless handles because they are easier/simpler to use.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    I was speaking in more general terms, but I'll provide some examples. I grip my mouse to use its side buttons to navigate forward/backward in a web browser. Human hands are generally good at holding things, and flat touchscreens/trackpads aren't very holdable. Power tools, steering wheels, gear shifts, volume knobs -- all examples of things that are gripped.
mistercow 10y ago
> There's this entire train of reasoning that seems to be that a rich interface is one that places as many demands as possible on the human body I disagree completely. The line of reasoning is "what actions can we perform that have the highest bandwidth, and lowest cognitive load?" And various forms of manual manipulation, like gripping, are an excellent avenue of exploration when answering that question.

SiVal 10y ago

It seems pretty obvious that accessibility is always going to require extra thought Actually, I think this extra thought could help everyone by treating disabilities as just special cases of the general idea that different people prefer different input/output devices and having apps (mostly) stop processing low-level input (keystrokes, pixel hit testing) and switch to handling more abstract "primitives". The OS would have a set of more abstract primitives: enter text, zoom in, zoom out, rotate, 3d move, 3d rotate, select item, select 2d region, select 3d region, deselect, grab, cancel, undo, etc. You, the user, would need a set of I/O devices that provided one or more implementations of each primitive in the checklist. One user would send an "undo" to an app with a click of the tongue, another with a hand gesture, another by pressing the ESC key, but the app just gets an "undo" event from the OS. For 2d region select, for example, one would use a joystick, another uses voice, another uses eye movement. The app doesn't process pixel hit testing to do its own region select, it lets the OS tell it what region of the 2d surface was selected. The app makers don't make the app "accessible" themselves, they just make it respond to the checklist of higher-level primitives. You could provide at least the core functionality of most apps by this means after which an app could possibly add some lower-level processing in the form of "shortcuts". When I'm forced to use a watch interface away from my keyboard, I am in a sense "disabled". When driving in my car with eyes on the road, I am "disabled". I'm not a gamer, so relative to a gamer with mad joystick skillz, I am "disabled". Well, fine, just change the approach to software interaction to a more abstract type of interaction that treats us all as being variously abled.