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> I have family with disabilities. This has an interesting history. I’m struggling to find it and hope I have it right. John Gruber or maybe Accidental Tech Po

> I have family with disabilities. This has an interesting history. I’m struggling to find it and hope I have it right. John Gruber or maybe Accidental Tech Podcast did a segment on an podcast ages ago in relation to accessibility settings on the iPhone. Whoever it was credited a particular Apple engineer who pushed hard with accessibility features arguing that at some point, everyone has some sort of issue (sight, hearing, movement etc). I’ve tried, but can’t find the episode, which is a shame as this sort of thing is Apple at its best, which does get lost in the swamp of depressing decisions they have made in recent years.

dools 2y ago
Reminds me of the Cindy Li quote “we are all just temporarily abled”
dtjohnnymonkey 2y ago
I felt this keenly when my children were very young. At times I only had one arm/hand free because I was holding a child in the other. Or I could only read poorly in the dark because I didn’t want to turn on the lights and disturb the kids. Since then I always see accessibility thinking as a universal benefit, not just for the “abled”.
growfeather 2y ago
This is awesome, and this type of accessibility (noting that it can be temporary, permanent or situational) and consideration is known as inclusive design in modern parlance.
owenfi 2y ago
I think it's been said better elsewhere but it might be: https://atp.fm/483 https://atp.fm/483 John for a bit @ 1:11:44 Casey and John @ 1:15:30 "The more time you spend on this planet the more likely one of these features will be useful for you"
hedora 2y ago
It's nice that they try, but I wish the accessibility features weren't so terrible. Case in point: I put off getting a new prescription, and ended up setting the font size up + enabling bold text on my iPhone. The first party apps often don't work well. Of everything on my phone, GasBuddy handled it best. It's basically unusable with large fonts, but it suggested I go into per-app settings and disable display accessibility settings just for it. Now that I know that's a thing, I can blacklist the 90% of apps on the phone that don't display right, I guess. Since the new glasses arrived, I'll probably just disable accessibility. However, my experience doesn't bode well for people that actually need reading glasses and want to use their phones when they're out and about.
- kridsdale1 2y ago
  iOS app guy here. One of the main reasons most apps do poorly here is our designers and PMs NEVER think about anything other than the standard size iPhone at normal font size in light mode. This is true at every company i worked at. In Apple 1p apps the reason is also that the codebase is 15 years old now and very hard to make adaptive.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    Frankly web devs seem to have no idea you can enlarge fonts either. I keep most of my browsing slightly zoomed in, especially on the laptop, and I get all sorts of glitches now and then. Incidentally HN is Just Fine(tm).
nottorp 2y ago
Accessibility as it is in modern parlance isn't only for people with disabilities. Disabling the annoying needless animations on iOS is in Accessibility for some reason.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  I think that was because some people get motion sickness easily. ‘Accessibility’ is where the setting is because turning the feature off stops them being disabled... maybe?
  - nottorp 2y ago
    But I don't get motion sickness from those. I still turn them off.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  Because we are all disabled in that our lives are too short to sit through all that pointless theatrical animation.

dools 2y ago

Reminds me of the Cindy Li quote “we are all just temporarily abled”

dtjohnnymonkey 2y ago

I felt this keenly when my children were very young. At times I only had one arm/hand free because I was holding a child in the other. Or I could only read poorly in the dark because I didn’t want to turn on the lights and disturb the kids. Since then I always see accessibility thinking as a universal benefit, not just for the “abled”.

growfeather 2y ago

This is awesome, and this type of accessibility (noting that it can be temporary, permanent or situational) and consideration is known as inclusive design in modern parlance.

owenfi 2y ago

I think it's been said better elsewhere but it might be: https://atp.fm/483 https://atp.fm/483 John for a bit @ 1:11:44 Casey and John @ 1:15:30 "The more time you spend on this planet the more likely one of these features will be useful for you"

hedora 2y ago

It's nice that they try, but I wish the accessibility features weren't so terrible. Case in point: I put off getting a new prescription, and ended up setting the font size up + enabling bold text on my iPhone. The first party apps often don't work well. Of everything on my phone, GasBuddy handled it best. It's basically unusable with large fonts, but it suggested I go into per-app settings and disable display accessibility settings just for it. Now that I know that's a thing, I can blacklist the 90% of apps on the phone that don't display right, I guess. Since the new glasses arrived, I'll probably just disable accessibility. However, my experience doesn't bode well for people that actually need reading glasses and want to use their phones when they're out and about.

kridsdale1 2y ago
iOS app guy here. One of the main reasons most apps do poorly here is our designers and PMs NEVER think about anything other than the standard size iPhone at normal font size in light mode. This is true at every company i worked at. In Apple 1p apps the reason is also that the codebase is 15 years old now and very hard to make adaptive.
- nottorp 2y ago
  Frankly web devs seem to have no idea you can enlarge fonts either. I keep most of my browsing slightly zoomed in, especially on the laptop, and I get all sorts of glitches now and then. Incidentally HN is Just Fine(tm).

nottorp 2y ago

Accessibility as it is in modern parlance isn't only for people with disabilities. Disabling the annoying needless animations on iOS is in Accessibility for some reason.

lostlogin 2y ago
I think that was because some people get motion sickness easily. ‘Accessibility’ is where the setting is because turning the feature off stops them being disabled... maybe?
- nottorp 2y ago
  But I don't get motion sickness from those. I still turn them off.
DonHopkins 2y ago
Because we are all disabled in that our lives are too short to sit through all that pointless theatrical animation.