14 ms·

Previews of software updates designed for people with disabilities

378 points by ArmandGrillet 5y ago

rbinv 5y ago
Wow, I did not expect the Apple Watch to be able to detect those gestures shown in the video. Impressive.
- janekm 5y ago
  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..."
  - ratww 5y ago
    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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uvQTTPr9Rw
  - GloriousKoji 5y ago
    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.
- ngcazz 5y ago
  Seconded, and I can't wait to try these out - case in point that accessibility options really are for everybody!
  - codyb 5y ago
    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.
  - twobitshifter 5y ago
    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.
    - astrange 5y ago
      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.
- neither_color 5y ago
  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.
  - tW4r 5y ago
    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/ https://www.mudra-band.com/
    - nighthawk454 5y ago
      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.
sitkack 5y ago
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.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  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.
  - Ar-Curunir 5y ago
    > 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.
  - astrange 5y ago
    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.
crazygringo 5y ago
> 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.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  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 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.
  - edwcross 5y ago
    Did you try https://mynoise.net 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).
    - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
      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.
shade 5y ago
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.
- snyp 5y ago
  Doesn't Voice Over do that?
  - chris37879 5y ago
    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.
- joshstrange 5y ago
  > 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.
  - 5y ago
nailer 5y ago
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.
kstrauser 5y ago
> 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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jordanmorgan10 5y ago
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.
myth_drannon 5y ago
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.
pkaye 5y ago
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.
- nkjoep 5y ago
  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.
  - pkaye 5y ago
    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.
  - sjnair96 5y ago
    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.
    - machello13 5y ago
      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.
      - 5y ago
notatoad 5y ago
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?
- websites420 5y ago
  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
  - Jemaclus 5y ago
    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!
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      That’s interesting. Since I type far quicker than I can speak, I would have definitely expected typing to be quicker than signing.
      - b3morales 5y ago
        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.)
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
chipotle_coyote 5y ago
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".
rado 5y ago
Fix keyboard accessibility first, instead of releasing PR bullet points.
- joemi 5y ago
  A good addition is still a good addition.
WalterBright 5y ago
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).
- robin_reala 5y ago
  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.
  - tolbish 5y ago
    I'm not sure how much that definition holds water. Am I disabled if I'm temporarily not able to do cognitive work?
    - zepto 5y ago
      Yes?
    - philipyoungg 5y ago
      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.
      - tolbish 5y ago
        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".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
slver 5y ago
It's really odd sometimes how much they focus on disability features, while also completely ignoring localization in entire countries.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  My guess is that they aren’t comfortable shipping any localization unless they can make it perfect, and they don’t have that yet.
  - slver 5y ago
    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?
- rsfinn 5y ago
  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.)
  - slver 5y ago
    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.
zepto 5y ago
“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.
- Retr0spectrum 5y ago
  Who are you quoting?
  - zepto 5y ago
    A common archetype.
owenversteeg 5y ago
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.
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrUMYePxzfM
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  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.
- GloriousKoji 5y ago
  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 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.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  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.
anticristi 5y ago
> 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.
- alwillis 5y ago
  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.
- astrange 5y ago
  iOS has been the most usable UI for people with various disabilities since it came out.
sergiotapia 5y ago
Q: Why do they call it "limb differences" instead of what I learned it a decade ago as "disabilities". Is "disabilities" considered offensive?
- saagarjha 5y ago
  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.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- pilsetnieks 5y ago
  The page is literally titled "Apple previews powerful software updates designed for people with disabilities." I assume this is simply being more specific.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  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.
victor106 5y ago
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
kingsuper20 5y ago
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
punnerud 5y ago
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.
mrkramer 5y ago
Good updates for accessibility.
api 5y ago
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.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Thankfully Android (without Google stuff) is technically FOSS.
- krrrh 5y ago
  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.
vitorfebraga 5y ago
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 https://bit.ly/3oFyJ63,Instagram: vitorfebraga
vitorfebraga 5y ago
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
escapologybb 5y ago
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.

378 points by ArmandGrillet 5y ago

rbinv 5y ago

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

janekm 5y ago
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..."
- ratww 5y ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uvQTTPr9Rw
- GloriousKoji 5y ago
  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.
ngcazz 5y ago
Seconded, and I can't wait to try these out - case in point that accessibility options really are for everybody!
- codyb 5y ago
  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.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  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.
  - astrange 5y ago
    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.
neither_color 5y ago
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.
- tW4r 5y ago
  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/ https://www.mudra-band.com/
  - nighthawk454 5y ago
    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.

sitkack 5y ago

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.

user-the-name 5y ago
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.
- Ar-Curunir 5y ago
  > 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.
- astrange 5y ago
  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.

crazygringo 5y ago

> 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.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
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 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.
- edwcross 5y ago
  Did you try https://mynoise.net 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).
  - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
    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.

shade 5y ago

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.

snyp 5y ago
Doesn't Voice Over do that?
- chris37879 5y ago
  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.
joshstrange 5y ago
> 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.
- 5y ago

nailer 5y ago

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.

kstrauser 5y ago

> 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.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jordanmorgan10 5y ago

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.

myth_drannon 5y ago

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.

pkaye 5y ago

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.

nkjoep 5y ago
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.
- pkaye 5y ago
  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.
- sjnair96 5y ago
  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.
  - machello13 5y ago
    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.
    - 5y ago

notatoad 5y ago

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?

websites420 5y ago
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
- Jemaclus 5y ago
  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!
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    That’s interesting. Since I type far quicker than I can speak, I would have definitely expected typing to be quicker than signing.
    - b3morales 5y ago
      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.)
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago

chipotle_coyote 5y ago

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".

rado 5y ago

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

joemi 5y ago
A good addition is still a good addition.

WalterBright 5y ago

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).

robin_reala 5y ago
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.
- tolbish 5y ago
  I'm not sure how much that definition holds water. Am I disabled if I'm temporarily not able to do cognitive work?
  - zepto 5y ago
    Yes?
  - philipyoungg 5y ago
    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.
    - tolbish 5y ago
      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".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

slver 5y ago

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

saagarjha 5y ago
My guess is that they aren’t comfortable shipping any localization unless they can make it perfect, and they don’t have that yet.
- slver 5y ago
  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?
rsfinn 5y ago
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.)
- slver 5y ago
  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.

zepto 5y ago

“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.

Retr0spectrum 5y ago
Who are you quoting?
- zepto 5y ago
  A common archetype.

owenversteeg 5y ago

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.

CharlesW 5y ago
> 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrUMYePxzfM
Rebelgecko 5y ago
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.
GloriousKoji 5y ago
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 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.
twobitshifter 5y ago
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.

anticristi 5y ago

> 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.

alwillis 5y ago
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.
astrange 5y ago
iOS has been the most usable UI for people with various disabilities since it came out.

sergiotapia 5y ago

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

saagarjha 5y ago
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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
pilsetnieks 5y ago
The page is literally titled "Apple previews powerful software updates designed for people with disabilities." I assume this is simply being more specific.
duskwuff 5y ago
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.

victor106 5y ago

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

kingsuper20 5y ago

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

punnerud 5y ago

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.

mrkramer 5y ago

Good updates for accessibility.

api 5y ago

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.

fomine3 5y ago
Thankfully Android (without Google stuff) is technically FOSS.
krrrh 5y ago
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.

vitorfebraga 5y ago

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 https://bit.ly/3oFyJ63,Instagram: vitorfebraga

vitorfebraga 5y ago

escapologybb 5y ago

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.