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"Ignorance". That's the word we're all looking for here. As a lefty, I've often felt frustrated, or even furious as the ignorance of UX for those of us that do

"Ignorance". That's the word we're all looking for here. As a lefty, I've often felt frustrated, or even furious as the ignorance of UX for those of us that don't fit the norm. The comments from the developers that responded to this clearly showed such ignorance, that it's a "power-user" feature etc. If I use my mouse left handed, as a left-handed person, is it a "power-user" feature to want the buttons the opposite way around? You'll probably find that the less stubborn lefties of the world, such as myself, have actually developed into a form of ambidexterity. Not entirely ambidextrous (I can't write well with my right hand, for example), but something of the sort. I'm a lefty, there is no doubt, but I use a computer like any other right-handed person (apart from using tenkey-less keyboards, because a numpad is useless to me). This is the option we have when the world around us is created for everyone _else_. I once worked for a company that was commissioned by a local government body to add accessibility features to the company's own (local travel) app because it was unusable by the members of the community that required those accessibility features. This is great, but, the task was given to me. What experience do I have with resolving accessibility problems? I'm just a developer. Was I given the resources to go out and survey those that required the accessibility features? Was I given contact with the local government that commissioned the improvements? Was I given a book on "Designing & Developing with Accessibility in Mind"? No. I completely understand where OP is coming from with this, and when the problem is with a company as large, ethereal and ignorant as Google is, it goes beyond frustration.

pgeorgi 8y ago
> is it a "power-user" feature to want the buttons the opposite way around? That's supported. What isn't supported is mapping arbitrary buttons to arbitrary functions because that's a hard problem to solve generically: see Evoluent having to ship their own customization software for Windows and Mac instead of just using OS configuration screens.
- alias_neo 8y ago
  My example isn't the greatest, I agree, because it is, generally supported everywhere. A more appropriate example might have been scroll-bars, very few devices support moving them to the left. particularly when it's a touch device and I want to actually use my left-index finger, or a stylus (a la Nintendo DS, et al). This is not a hard problem to solve generically, but it is rarely solved in my experience. I agree with what you're saying, the problem I see is that OP has pointed out _why_ this feature is required (accessibility) but 5 years later it's still not solved. This is frustrating as the person that _needs_ that feature. If any one of those developers had _needed_ the feature, I bet it'd have been implemented in no time at all. The people responsible aren't affected, and thus don't care. When your user-base is as large as Google's, a small feature like this might affect more people in that tiny minority that the entire customer base of some small companies, but at this scale they're so far removed, nobody cares. Talking of features we want Google to add; when are they going to finally allow us to set the hostname on Android phones? I'm sure that one was opened half a decade or so ago (This one issue is now 9 years old: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36912590 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36912590)
  - pgeorgi 8y ago
    > If any one of those developers had _needed_ the feature, I bet it'd have been implemented in no time at all. The ticket the blog author refers to was opened by someone @google.com. There are at least 5 different additional @google.com addresses chiming in in favor of such a feature. Even when developers want something, they don't always get it on the schedule they desire.

pgeorgi 8y ago

> is it a "power-user" feature to want the buttons the opposite way around? That's supported. What isn't supported is mapping arbitrary buttons to arbitrary functions because that's a hard problem to solve generically: see Evoluent having to ship their own customization software for Windows and Mac instead of just using OS configuration screens.

alias_neo 8y ago
My example isn't the greatest, I agree, because it is, generally supported everywhere. A more appropriate example might have been scroll-bars, very few devices support moving them to the left. particularly when it's a touch device and I want to actually use my left-index finger, or a stylus (a la Nintendo DS, et al). This is not a hard problem to solve generically, but it is rarely solved in my experience. I agree with what you're saying, the problem I see is that OP has pointed out _why_ this feature is required (accessibility) but 5 years later it's still not solved. This is frustrating as the person that _needs_ that feature. If any one of those developers had _needed_ the feature, I bet it'd have been implemented in no time at all. The people responsible aren't affected, and thus don't care. When your user-base is as large as Google's, a small feature like this might affect more people in that tiny minority that the entire customer base of some small companies, but at this scale they're so far removed, nobody cares. Talking of features we want Google to add; when are they going to finally allow us to set the hostname on Android phones? I'm sure that one was opened half a decade or so ago (This one issue is now 9 years old: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36912590 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36912590)
- pgeorgi 8y ago
  > If any one of those developers had _needed_ the feature, I bet it'd have been implemented in no time at all. The ticket the blog author refers to was opened by someone @google.com. There are at least 5 different additional @google.com addresses chiming in in favor of such a feature. Even when developers want something, they don't always get it on the schedule they desire.