13 ms·
Touchscreens are anti-accessibility. Lack of tactile feedback for the sight-impaired is the obvious part but there is another thing: Touchscreens just stop re
by praptak 2y ago
Touchscreens are anti-accessibility.
Lack of tactile feedback for the sight-impaired is the obvious part but there is another thing:
Touchscreens just stop registering your touch when you get old. The older you get the less moisture there's in your skin, which at some point makes touch screens ignore you.
https://www.gabefender.com/writing/touch-screens-dont-work-for-everyone https://www.gabefender.com/writing/touch-screens-dont-work-f...
- phrenq 2y agoAt a former company, we were all issued YubiKey Nanos, which just never worked for me. None of my coworkers had a problem, but I couldn’t get the damn thing to register a touch no matter what I did, including swapping keys. Eventually I came across a thread on an internal list for employees over forty, with several other people who were all having the same problem. The solution? Lick your finger. Gross, but it did the trick. And I’m stuck licking my finger every time I need to make a YubiKey work.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoI wonder if that explains the stereotype of old people licking their fingers to turn pages
- phrenq 2y agoThat’s funny, I hadn’t thought of that. It very well might be true that turning pages is easier for people with more moisture in their skin.
- arccy 2y agoso books are not accessible: kindles are better
- kibwen 2y agoI'm unclear if this was intended to be sarcastic, but it's certainly possible for e-readers to be more accessible than books, at least for models that actually have physical buttons (and especially considering that e-readers can have zoomable text).
- dotancohen 2y agoI am actually reading this on an e-reader. I find it more accessible than either my phone or my desktop. And easier on the eyes.
- InsideOutSanta 2y agoAs far as I can tell, none of the current Kindle models have physical page turn buttons anymore, which is insane to me. Turning the page is the main thing I do on an ebook, having a button on the side is so much more convenient than touching the screen, I don't obscure what I'm looking at, and I don't smudge the screen.
- kridsdale3 2y agoThe BOOX Palma is an e-ink Android device (not a phone) that I run the Kindle app on. It has physical page buttons, and is better than any of the Kindle devices I've used. Also tunable ink speed and color temperature.
- freedomben 2y agoMaybe not accessible in the a11y sense, but definitely accessible in the "can read without DRM" sense. I'll take a book I can keep and read whenever and however I want to one that has to phone home and ask a giant corporation if it's ok.
- grues-dinner 2y agoGet a Kobo and install KoReader.
- deleted 2y ago
- zxexz 2y agoYes this is very much the reason. It gets dry where I am in the winter, and it never occurred to me to do this. An older gent in a coffee shop once watched me try to turn a page, and enlightened me. I’ve met more than a few people who have a dedicated finger glove for turning pages :)
- buran77 2y agoWet sponges [0] for people counting money were a very common sight some decades ago before money counting machines and mostly electronic payments. Probably still being used just not so obvious anymore. Regardless of age fingertips will eventually get too dry as the paper absorbs all the moisture and flipping pages or separating banknotes becomes hard. For touchscreens dry fingers are also called "zombie finger" [1]. The screen registers the too minute change in electrical field as noise and rejects the touch event. Some sweat (but not too much) on the fingers makes all the difference. [0] https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sponge-finger-wet-money-damper-260nw-1276035634.jpg https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sponge-finger-wet... [1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/06/zombie-finger-and-touchscreens/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/06/zombie-fing...
- freedomben 2y agoI'm also in a dry climate, and even as a teenager I often had to lick my fingers in order to get the plastic bags at the grocery store open (I was a bagger so had to do it all day). Eventually we got smart and started putting wet sponges by the bags, which is also an amazing life hack if you have trouble turning pages.
- pndy 2y agoThat sounds more like a soft percussive maintenance
- kgwgk 2y agoOld people?
- MikeTheGreat 2y agoYes, it does. Source: when I was 5 I saw my grandmother, RIP, doing that and asked her about it. She explained that as she got older her fingers got drier, and now it's just easier to flip pages that way.
- mrkstu 2y agoIts also the only way I can open a plastic bag in the meat section of Costco.
- gessha 2y agoI was shopping at a grocery store and a lady saw me visible distraught by not being able to open a clear bag and she told me to touch some of the produce I’m about to pick up or the moisture around them. Never had the problem again. Thank you, random lady!
- hn72774 2y agoRubbing the opening side of the bag between your palms generates static and opens it too. Learned that from a meat department employee who saw me struggling one day.
- Moru 2y agoI used to do that too. But now the plastic bags are gone and there is these paper bags with slightly offset edges att he opening. Really neat invention, why didn't we do that before? :-)
- smsm42 2y agoRubbing and then blowing on it to enlarge whatever opening has been created usually works just fine.
- Tagbert 2y ago
- wruza 2y agoThere’s a whole “fingertip moistener [pad]” thingy if you need it often. Cashiers and secretaries often use them at work.
- thih9 2y agoOff topic, a dog’s wet nose also works. Surprisingly useful on walks, e.g. when a poop bag won’t cooperate in a critical moment and licking your fingers is not an option.
- Arrath 2y agoWell I'm filing this tip away for future use.
- girvo 2y agoThat is a genuinely useful tip, considering the circumstances I've run into! Don't _really_ want to lick my fingers while dealing with dog poop, but the bags are a pain to open sometimes
- konfusinomicon 2y agoexpert level dog poo management tip!
- eru 2y agoThe dog's nose is wet, because the dog licks it.
- loco5niner 2y agoDog poop is often also wet, and it's right there.
- wruza 2y agoExactly. You turn a bag inside out afterwards anyway, so the dirty part stays inside.
- 2y ago
- coldtea 2y agoIt's not a stereotype and it's not really a mystery. Licking or wetting your fingers for this purpose has been a standard practice across the globe, when people are dealing with turning pages (e.g. for accounting), counting tickets, coupons, paper money, etc. It was never just something older people did (except in the sense that the practice is not as common now, as people in the US and Europe don't need to do it that much anymore, due to changes like reduced use of cash, etc.). So, you might not have seen it since the need is mostly obsolete in most of the west, but it's still a thing elsewhere, and was very much a thing in the US and Europe too until a few decades back. So much so, that there were office gadgets made for this, basically a base holding a small sponge, that you would add water to, and use it to wet your fingers for counting/changing pages. They're still very much sold: https://www.amazon.com/money-counting-sponge/s?k=money+counting+sponge https://www.amazon.com/money-counting-sponge/s?k=money+count...
- TeMPOraL 2y agoI'm not stranger to licking my fingers when dealing with cash, or licking stamps and envelopes, etc. but the way some old people do it was always a little mystery to me. I'd see them taking a second or three to quite conspicuously stick their tongue out and slowly lick their finger every single time before turning a page or a banknote. I always figured it's just a force of habit, but they're doing it in maximum power-save mode, and are way past giving a fuck about how gross it looks to everyone around them. I never considered that maybe they really need to do it this way to keep their fingers moist. (That realization scares me, as it means I too might become an obnoxious finger-licker in a few years.)
- justinclift 2y agoMaybe a key chain instead with a moistened pad that doesn't easily go dry? :)
- TeMPOraL 2y agoHonestly, and in line with a reply upthread[0], fresh saliva may be more sanitary. I mean, it has some non-zero antimicrobial properties, plus it doesn't accumulate random stuff that could grow over time. Yeah, I'm starting to understand why old people may be past the point of giving a damn about the optics. -- [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42036400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42036400
- BlandDuck 2y agoI can also be used to poison people who read forbidden books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Name_of_the_Rose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Name_of_the_Rose
- denotational 2y agoI just finished reading this last night at 01:30; what a book!
- abakker 2y agoTruly an incredible work.
- ttepasse 2y agoI'm a little bit envious. Reading such a great book for the first time. I recommend re-reading it in a few years. Ecos books grow with you; the more you learn about the world and history, the more you'll find in nuance in that book. Maybe more true for me - as a teenager I've read it first as a mostly weird detective story. Later re-reads made me more interested in the weird parts. There is, by the way, a separately published Postscript to the Name of the Rose with some notes on writing the book.
- markman 2y agoI get it now: Jorge had laced its pages with poison, correctly assuming that a reader would have to lick his fingers in order to turn them. Nice pull.
- permo-w 2y agothat's for stickiness, this is for conductivity
- Log_out_ 2y agoUser accounting the with the sibling system.lick the device to prove its your cake or you are thoroughly protected from being thoroughly grossed out by growing up with siblings .
- marcosdumay 2y agoThere exist some "artificial tongues" that people use to turn pages. It's a rosin-like substance that comes in a small can.
- deepsun 2y agoThere exist artificial fingers to tap smartphones, sold in cold climates, so you don't need to take off gloves. Regular sausages in their packaging work great.
- cbzbc 2y agoYou can effectively get these surfaces built into the glove, a number of companies sell such things.
- mirekrusin 2y agoWhy they don't need to be wet?
- cbzbc 2y agoTo activate a touchscreen they simply need to have capacitive properties.
- mirekrusin 2y agoInteresting, it sounds like they should try to invent something that works in similar way to nerves on the skin as you can feel slightest touch regardless of moisture.
- eternityforest 2y agoMaybe multiple accelerometers plus machines learning could improve tao detection?
- deepsun 2y ago
- xyst 2y agojust apply some “hawk tuah”, new tagline for yubikey nano
- willmadden 2y agoDrink more water.
- vdvsvwvwvwvwv 2y agoMoisturizer shoud help too?
- necovek 2y agoI wouldn't drink just any moisturizer.
- miohtama 2y agoCheck under your eyelid that you are not an android
- pipes 2y agoGreat! I'm in my forties and my laptop finger print scanner seems really temperamental, I'll try licking my finger!
- joecool1029 2y agoI used to rub the side of my nose briefly to make fingerprint reader work on thinkpads, I think this coats the finger with enough oil to make it work reliably.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoIt works for my phone's fingerprint scanner. I used to have issues with it, and eventually thought it might be caused by the extra "safety glass" glued on top of the screen. Then one day, after another failed fingerprint unlock attempt, I noticed a text on the screen suggesting to moisten my finger. It must have been added in some system update, and I'm very thankful for that, or else I'd have to wait until this HN thread to figure this out.
- Projectiboga 2y agoAh I'm 56, the touch screen on my phone has gotten finicky. I'll have to see if that would help in a pinch. I wouldn't want to rely on that all the time but under time pressure it is good to know about that.
- szszrk 2y agoI'm almost 40, some years ago I noticed that at winter I get more frustrated with my phones and start thinking of changing them. It turned out each winter I make screens much more dirty and my fingers are drier. Touch gets more random, fingerprint readers success rate drops from 100% to more like 50%. Nowadays I make sure I clean the screen with actual dedicated products often, and make sure I keep hands moisturized. It works well, even if the latter contributes to the former. Haven't changed phone in over 2 years and still don't feel the need for change :)
- veunes 2y agoOils or dirt can interfere with touch sensitivity
- jjtheblunt 2y agoi thought possibly bloodflow is less prevalent on the surface of your fingers in cold weather, and finger touches are harder to detect as a result, but i don't have data or proof.
- dotancohen 2y agoYou should really look at the S series by Samsung. I've been using Note devices since the Note 3, I would not give up the stylus for anything at this point.
- notpushkin 2y agoNot sure if it’s available on your phone, but look for a High touch sensitivity option in display settings. Helps me a lot in winter.
- BobAliceInATree 2y agoIf you’d rather not lick your finger, you can get one of those old-school sponge stamp/envelope moisteners.
- Izkata 2y agoI'm not as old as everyone else here is mentioning, but started having this issue a few years ago with my phone. My fix was to rub my hands together for a few seconds. Don't know why but it's always worked for me.
- mh- 2y agoI'm curious if you have issues with pulse oximeters too. The thing they use to check your blood oxygen level when you go to the doctor. I don't tend to have the issues everyone here is talking about, but those things never work for me on the first try.
- endoblast 2y agoOr lick the back of your hand and then moisten the finger on that. More discreet and more hygienic (well, hygienic for you at least).
- DavideNL 2y ago> Lick your finger. Exactly, i do the same thing with my (new) Macbook Air, it makes the TouchID sensor work much more reliable (also, i use my middle finger by the way...)
- fragmede 2y agoNow the terrorists know which finger of yours to cut off!
- veunes 2y agoI remember how my mom's Touch ID didn’t work. Thank goodness they came up with Face ID
- hawski 2y agoWould breathing on it (wide open mouth air blow, I'm not a native speaker) work as well but be contactless way of achieving it?
- lisper 2y ago> I'm not a native speaker You got it (mostly) right :-) Just one minor mistake: a native would write, "Would breathing on it be a contactless way..." in order to indicate that this is only one of several possibilities. You could also say, "Would breathing on it be the contactless way..." in order to indicate that this was the only possibility. The rule here is really weird. The qualifier is only required when there is a singular noun being used as an object. "Breathing is way of doing it" sounds weird, but "Breathing and licking are ways of doing it" does not. "English is super-weird" sounds right. "English is super-weird language" sound weird.
- montag 2y ago“Breathing on” works as you intended (like breathing on a cold window to make it foggy); the alternative “blowing on” does not.
- justsomehnguy 2y agoreal life verification can /s but not so much EDIT: back in the day cashiers had a thing to moisture your fingers flipping the bills/notes/papers
- planckscnst 2y agoYou can also use some other part of your body that has moisture. My nose and my scalp are really oily, so I can rub my finger on my nose and then do the touch controls and fingerprint sensors and have it work
- mewpmewp2 2y agoGlad it didn't end with what where my imagination went.
- 6510 2y agoI can make your wine glass sing by rubbing the edge with my finger.
- kridsdale3 2y agoThe first people who got their hands on iPads, I recall did test them in this way.
- spectre3d 2y agoApple told us the first iPad supports up to 11 finger multitouch, so people were understandably curious and got creative.
- 6510 2y agouhh how to describe this... you can control how much saliva you push to the front of your mouth when you spit. The correct amount is next to nothing. Rubbing your thumb over your index finger spreads the moisture and provides feedback. (I have to open countless garbage bags, licking is not an option)
- montag 2y agoIt would be amazing if Yubico offered a physical button option. I really hope it’s not the case that capacitive sensors are somehow preferred from a security standpoint (i.e., harder to trigger with a robot).
- fragmede 2y agoyou can just use a hotdog to trigger it if you only have metal/plastic/composite fingers
- NavinF 2y agoHave you checked your A1C (average blood sugar)? I wonder if this is caused by low blood circulation near the surface of your skin. "Excess blood sugar decreases the elasticity of blood vessels and causes them to narrow, impeding blood flow"
- wildrhythms 2y agoI think it's just dry skin. When I worked in corporate IT we had the same issue with Yubikey 'not working' and almost all of those issues came from people working in an especially arid part of the country. "Lick your finger" fixed it every time.
- m3kw9 2y agoSpit on your desk and dab it
- trgn 2y agomy desk in elementary school had a little inkwell in it
- t_tsonev 2y agoIf this is a laptop, it helps to touch the aluminum chassis or an exposed metal part with your other hand.
- creesch 2y agoYeah, some touch buttons work through conductivity and are really sensitive. Fittingly for this post, our cloths dryer has a touch "screen" which is to say that it is a slab of plastic with icons that are touch sensitive. Often enough, I can't get them to register a touch unless I press really hard or if I wet my finger first.
- werdnapk 2y agoWhen my pixel 7 doesn't recognize my fingerprint, I press my thumb on the side of my nose to pick up a bit of skin oils and then my thumb print is recognized.
- luuurker 2y agoThe Pixel 7 series has an optical sensor under the display. I wonder how some oil/cream/etc helps? The newer ones have ultrasonic sensors, so that should be better.
- Kirby64 2y agoIf your skin is dry enough it won’t make good contact with the screen so the “picture” will be bad. Adding a thin layer of oil basically acts as an optical transmission layer. Ultrasonic ones would probably have the same issue, honestly.
- brailsafe 2y agoIt's my only frustration with the Pixel 7. Left hand works fine, right is super inconsistent
- da768 2y agoThe device it's connected to also has an impact, IIRC M1 MacBook Pro 14 wouldn't let me trigger my YubiKey without a USB hub
- sourcepluck 2y agoI wonder if it would have worked to rub your finger off the side of your nose, or behind your ear? It's a trick some flute-players use for the pinky of the right hand, so that it works better rolling between the C, C#/Db and D notes on the bottom. I saw it mentioned in some tutorial once and thought: "no way", and was amazed at how well it worked. I never really asked myself how it works - something to do with skin on (dead) skin working up some friction, I don't know. I'd be curious to know if it would have worked with your YubiKey issue. But maybe it's too late to try now!
- sourcepluck 2y ago[and Eb, I should say]
- yazzku 2y agoEven for non-impaired people, the lag on a touch screen is utterly miserable.
- bhauer 2y agoSoftware lag isn't unique to touchscreens. Software lag is always a terrible thing, and developers who de-prioritize performance should be ashamed, but that is true regardless of what input is used.
- yazzku 2y agoA touch screen imposes additional lag, though. Detecting finger swipes for left/right, for example, requires more processing than spinning a fucking dial or pressing on a button. But, like you said, performance doesn't matter anymore to the companies that design these interfaces. We should have criminal laws for this type of thing along with the return to proper hardware interfaces. Lack of performance should be a criminal offense.
- jabroni_salad 2y agoIt's kinda bearable with buttons because you get feedback. The ATM I use isn't the speediest thing but the buttons have a very tactile feel and it beeps at you for every press. It might not be "impressive", but it does cause forty dollars to appear and that's really all I wanted from it. Now ask anyone with a touch screen in their car what their error rate on that thing is. Even the really good ones are pretty bad.
- crote 2y agoPhysical buttons allow for memorized action sequences, though. As long as the input layer has some kind of FIFO buffer, it doesn't really matter how much lag the actual application has. If "call home" is always just "button A, 3x button B, button C" it is absolutely trivial to repeat that without even looking at the screen. Touchscreens don't work quite as well for this. Even if it allows for input queuing, you often still need the previous screen to finish drawing to have a frame-of-reference for your presses. Even the slightest delay turns into an annoyance, and when it involves some kind of drag-scrolling a 50ms delay already becomes unbearable.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dimal 2y ago> She started getting frustrated, “it’s my fault, I don’t know how to use this thing properly.” This is heartbreaking. The woman is being excluded through no fault of her own, and she blames herself. I find this to be a common for people who don’t think of themselves as disabled but are made disabled by bad interfaces. They think there must be something wrong with themselves because everyone else has such an easy time, when really it’s the technology.
- rubslopes 2y agoI once saw an elderly woman trying to receive medical care at an urgent care clinic. She brought her documents and medical insurance card, but the receptionist told her she could only be checked in if she provided a two-factor authentication code from her insurance app. The woman was totally confused. It was heartbreaking to watch.
- MikeTheGreat 2y agoWhere do you live? And how is this supposed to work? Like, at all? Does the urgent care place have 2FA set up for every insurance company? Just the insurance companies they accept? What about folks that don't have their phone on them (which is reasonable to forget if you need medical care urgently, even if it's not ambulance-grade urgently). Plus, you've got the fact that the elderly are both a major market for medical services and famously techno-phobic....
- electricwire 2y agoThe cynical side of me wonders if its not intended to work well
- rubslopes 2y agoI don’t agree with the practice, but from what I understand, they’re trying to prevent clinics from scamming insurance companies by faking clinical visits. I've heard that this is a thing that happens here.
- tokai 2y agoHave seen laborers and blue collar workers, my father included, that have to use their knuckles because their finger tips are too callused and dry for touchsceens. Seems like many groups have these kind of issues.
- ainiriand 2y agoExactly, my brother works on power lines and wears many different types of gloves, all his computer tools are button actionated.
- analog31 2y agoThat's me. I'm a double bassist, a kind of blue collar laborer. ;-) It's worst during the winter. It's a shame because I prefer to use a touch screen on my laptop.
- have_faith 2y agoI'm not a labourer in the slightest, but I'm a rock climber though. Sometimes for up to two days after a strong session the finger print reader on my keyboard doesn't work. It always eventually starts working again :)
- mark_undoio 2y agoEven indoor bouldering has had an effect for me - my thicker skin just doesn't always register well on my phone screen.
- theandrewbailey 2y agoI worked in a fast food restaurant before college. I would be on the closing crew about three or four days a week. I would usually be the one washing and scrubbing the crusty broiler parts every time. When I got to college, they gave everyone Thinkpads with fingerprint readers. Mine had trouble reading my fingerprints for about 2 months. I guess that I scrubbed my fingerprints away with all that grease, and it took that long for my fingerprints to "regrow" enough for the sensor to recognize them.
- miki123211 2y agoIt's not touchscreens that are anti-accessibility, it's touch controls. That's a very important distinction. I can use a proper touchscreen phone just fine, as its OS is advanced enough to run a screen reader, and its touch screen can precisely locate where it was touched and supports flicks, swipes and multi-finger gestures. Proper touch screens have some very important advantages, notably being able to show different controls at different times. You want to have a different button layout when you're typing a text than when you're watching a movie or playing a game. Physical buttons make this impossible. Even blind people benefit from this, modern phones have a mode where you can use a touch screen to input characters in Braille, treating different parts of the screen as keys on a brailler (think piano with 6 keys). Each combination of these keys, pressed or touched at once, inputs a specific character[1]. Now touch controls, like those you can find on a washing machine / coffee maker, make no sense. There's no screen behind them, so they're not dynamic in any way, and the primitive software of such devices (as well as the need to seell them in multiple countries without providing specific support for any particular human language) make accessibility impossible to achieve.
- lozf 2y ago> Physical buttons make this impossible. For many years now we've had various interfaces that use physical buttons whose function can change at different times during operation, the current function being indicated by the screen: Old fashioned ATMs with 4 buttons on each side of the screen, many business-class feature-phones had "soft-keys", even old DOS programs that used Function Keys are conceptually similar. There are differing degrees of compromise vs utility.
- ChumpGPT 2y agoThis is so interesting; thanks for sharing. I often see my father-in-law tapping his phone a dozen times to get a response (85), and then I was teaching my mother how to use an iPad and noticed it was not that responsive to her taps. I sometimes need to tap twice to get anything to happen (50+), this helps me understand why.
- praptak 2y agoSee also the linked article. You can mitigate that by getting a stylus.
- jsheard 2y agoYou should check if there's a system setting to adjust the touch sensitivity, it's usually billed as a way to compensate for screen protectors but it'll probably also help with dry fingers not being detected reliably.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rralian 2y agoInteresting. I’ve noticed this happening for me but I thought it was because my fingertips are calloused from playing guitar. But I’m also in my late forties. So it’s probably a double whammy for me.
- galleywest200 2y agoI am the opposite, my hands get so sweaty that touchscreens register random inputs because of the residual salty moisture.
- nuancebydefault 2y agoHowever, i thought touch screens in cars are pressure sensitive rather than measuring changes in capacity? If the press is not registered in my car, i press a little harder. You can also use it while wearing normal gloves. That said, i use the physical knobs a lot more often, since your finger position will easily follow any moving button and nudges in rotating or shifting knobs feel super satisfying.
- freedomben 2y agoThose are actually different technologies, and I'm guessing you got used to the pressure sensitivity on older cars. They use resistive touchscreens which are cheaper. Cheap android tablets used to routinely use those instead of the capacitive touchscreens as well. It's been a while since I had to use a resistive touchscreen, and I'm glad for it.
- BenjiWiebe 2y agoOur milking robot has a resistive touchscreen. In that case it's excellent - you can spray it clean, and it still works while it's wet.
- freedomben 2y agoGreat point, there are situations where resistive is a lot better. I've definitely cursed my phone screen when it's raining.
- int_19h 2y agoThe nice thing about resistive is that you can use your fingernails as an impromptu stylus.
- GuB-42 2y agoIt depends on the car. Mine is resistive (like yours I think) and I can just press harder, I also don't have to use my fingers, something like a capped pen works perfectly. Though these kinds of screens are considered low-end compared to capacitive touchscreens because they require a heavy touch and usually don't support multitouch, I think these are the best for cars (if you don't have physical controls). But many modern cars (ex: Teslas) use capacitive screens like on smartphones.
- ethagnawl 2y agoI'm only 40 but have had this issue for years -- especially with Apple products -- and I think it's compounded by my fingers being pretty callused. Regardless, I'm just unable to reliably use my family's iPad, sign my kids out of daycare, etc. This is yet another example of accessibility being in everyone's interest.
- WesolyKubeczek 2y agoIf your iPad is plugged in, it’s extremely finicky with regard to the type of both the charger and the cable. Touch ID is extremely sensitive to electrical currents near it, it seems, and on home button/Touch ID it’s right near the charging socket. Oops. Unplug it, Touch ID works.
- wnevets 2y ago> Touchscreens just stop registering your touch when you get old. The older you get the less moisture there's in your skin, which at some point makes touch screens ignore you. I had no idea that was a thing but it makes sense now that you said it. I will now be a lot more understanding when older folks have trouble using their phones, self-checkout, etc.
- sholladay 2y agoI thought so too at first, but in hindsight this is a bad take. Pinch-to-zoom was revolutionary for people with low vision. VoiceOver was revolutionary for people with no vision. Blind people ended up being early adopters of iPhones because of how much better the UX is compared to phones with physical controls, where memorization of the controls and menus is much more necessary. The flexibility of UI enabled by touchscreens was revolutionary for people with dexterity and cognitive issues. See the Assistive Access feature, for example, which has made Jitterbug phones obsolete for many people. Touchscreens not responding to dry skin is a real problem, though I’ve only ever seen that on cheap hardware. Testing the device is obviously necessary. I still want physical controls for simple and common cases, such as the vents in my car. But I now think of them more in terms of convenience and safety rather than accessibility.
- croes 2y agoGood for them, bad for everyone else.
- joe_the_user 2y agoI'm a caregiver for a couple people with dexterity and cognitive issues and I'm pretty sure a physical button is the absolutely simplest thing for them as much as for anyone else. And sure, an Ipad definitely can solve some accessible issues for some things but my clients watch things on TVs and monitors rather than Ipads (even when they have them). But more to the point, I love my clients and friends with such issues but they don't drive and shouldn't drive.
- sholladay 2y agoI wasn’t suggesting anything about driving. I brought up the car as an example of where, yes, touchscreens have gone too far and physical controls are often preferable. TV remotes are among the most inaccessible consumer electronics devices. They can be made much better with a touchpad or a phone app or even a voice assistant. It’s still nice to have physical volume controls, of course.
- 2y ago
- ho_schi 2y agoI can confirm the troubles with age. Another problem are cold and hot environments (sweat). Anyway. Tactile input is generally better where an efficient placement of physical input controls is possible. Garmin is a seldom example of a company doing it right with the Edge 840. They merged the tactile 530 and the touch 830 into one device. The best of both worlds. Guess what I prefer? It is the Edge 530. Better screen to body ratio :) The rise of the touchscreens are an accident. Because MBAs believe iPhone == touch == good. It isn’t. The iPhone is just small, physical switches expensive (remember the slider smartphones) and you can merge output with input (this a pro and a con). Nice when you want to zoom a map. Horrible if Okay changes the position, worse when the keyboard requires the half screen and interaction is generally ineffective. I recommend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things 1. Layout your tactile interface in a way that it allows the user to create a mental model of it. 2. In best case this model exists already. 3. Make it hard to use it wrong. 4. Make it easy to use it right. 5. Also applies to the output. If the turn indicator is ON, make it ON. PS: Right now I struggle to hide my touch keyboard. No „DONE“ or „HIDE“ and I cannot access my bookmarks for my recommendation. Can I express an wish? Dear device manufacturers. Please used high quality switches with travel, resistance and a click „BIPPITY-BUMP“. Add a spring. Built in a indicator light within!
- thomassmith65 2y agoThe rise of the touchscreens are an accident. Because MBAs believe iPhone == touch == good. It isn’t. Amen! There so many flaws to touchscreens. With the most common touchscreen implementations: • user must hover hand above screen to avoid errant 'clicks' which is physically tiresome during prolonged use • user cannot locate button without looking at screen, and feedback, if any, is several ms delayed (ie: till audio 'click' sound plays) • user cannot easily control GUI on large, or multiple displays, since input-to-output scale is 1-to-1 • user cannot view the content under the target without workarounds (eg: iOS's loop widget) since user's finger blocks part of screen, and a human finger is relatively large compared to screen
- meindnoch 2y ago
- dan-0 2y agoThe opposite side of this is unpredictable or unintended behavior from too much moisture, which in my experience has been an acknowledgement with touch screens for quite some time. As touch screens for applications started to become common, this naturally filtered into tactical and service work fields. There is an advantage in this as it allows a more compact interface that can change more easily based on what the user needs. However the down side is, in harsh fast paced environments where the user may be moving quickly and sweating, it's much harder to register intended user feedback to the interface. The problem is not just if touch screens should be used, but also how they should be implemented. Especially on the side of general consumer electronics, like mobile phones, iOS and Android have built in interfaces for accessibility. In some cases you can get built in accessibility out of the box with very little effort, but the reality is, it takes a decent effort in most cases to get it right and users who need this behavior are not a heavy majority. This results in a deprioritization of accessibility in many mobile applications. This gets much worse with more hardware centric devices like thermostats, ovens, refrigerators, etc which have a higher tendency to have user interfaces developed in house and lacking any accessibility. Compounding this problem, with the popularity of touch screen interfaces, and post COVID supply chain problems, many users who needed accessible functionally were (maybe still are) left without many options, likely either having to pay a heavy premium for something with usable accessibility features, but probably more realistically, just taking what they can get. Modern technology makes accessibility easier than ever now, and enables accessibility in places that didn't previously exist, but the lack of willingness to implement accessible features on the part of some corporations is not just providing terrible accessibility, it's taking accessibility away from places where it previously existed.
- Yeul 2y agoInteresting comment! I frequently run into problems with the treadmill touchscreens at my gym. Obviously this is a very sweaty environment. I'm not at all opposed to technology but it should be superior to what it replaces.
- twobitshifter 2y agoOlder people are already having problems with screens on voting machines which feeds into the conspiracy theories.
- m-p-3 2y agoAnd dangerous in cars. There are laws forbidding us from touching our phones, but touching the embedded display is fair game? Bring back buttons, knobs and dials please. I shouldn't have to try to aim my finger at something intangible to change a setting while driving a ton of steel at 60mph. Just knowing where the buttons are and feeling the surface of the buttons while I can keep my eyes and attention on the road is paramount.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoHonestly, even without the danger factor it's a terrible interface. Last night I was trying to operate the touch screen in my wife's car, and the slight movement of the car as she drove meant that my hand kept missing the spot I was trying to hit. So even when you're a passenger and can focus on the screen, they still are less effective than buttons!
- anthonypasq 2y agoone of the main things i love about my mazda is that the display is not a touch screen, i can control everything with the knob and barely take my eyes off the road
- veunes 2y agoIt's one of those unexpected tech challenges with age
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoIt’s also inaccessible for able people of young age. I’ve noticed many car companies don’t have a mindset for good design. So they make touch screen interfaces with very small targets. These are hard to hit when the car is in motion and require distraction. Core functions should be physical by law. Some companies with dial based controls like BMW’s iDrive got it right.
- meindnoch 2y agoSame thing happens if you play the guitar a lot and build up calluses on your fretting hand. Touchscreens stop registering certain parts of your fingertip where the skin is sufficiently thickened.
- jpc0 2y agoIronically fingerprint sensors just don't work for my dad, hes been an artisan all his life so even when he needs to actually give fingerprints ( police or whatever) they actually struggle to get prints off his hands. Unrelated note, maybe Apple has this in mind when they implemented faceID...
- maeil 2y ago> Touchscreens are anti-accessibility. They're anti-accesibility for one group and accessibility for another. I'm part of the latter group that struggles with tactile buttons for physical reasons. The former group may be bigger (no idea what the data looks like), but it's not black and white.
- dhosek 2y agoiOS is surprisingly accessibly for the blind and visually impaired. Apple has shown that it can be done and between app review and accessibility support in the frameworks, despite the lack of buttons, the iPhone has long been the preferred phone for the visually impaired. Never heard this about touchscreens not registering your touch when you get old. I guess my 83-year-old mother¹ and 92-year-old father aren’t old enough to experience this yet. ⸻ 1. On the other hand, because her fingerprints have essentially vanished, my mother was never able to get touch ID to work.
- RobMurray 2y agoiOS is accessible to blind people because of Voiceover, not because it has a touch screen. There really isn't a great alternative if you want access to all the mainstream apps. I used to have a Sony android phone with a tiny physical keyboard, and I still miss the keyboard even though Talkback on android in those days (Android 4) was unbelievably bad. Before that, I could text quicker on a t9 keypad than I can with the qwerty keyboard on a touch screen. The feedback from tactile keys also means you don't have to constantly listen exclusively to the phone while operating it. I find it impossible to use Voiceover in a noisy environment or when someone is talking to me.
- raxxorraxor 2y agoI work in the medical industry where hygiene is very important and on some days I have to disinfect my hands multiple times. Capacitive touch screens ignore me regularly. There is disinfectant that allegedly retains some moisture/fat, but they can only do so much. But here touch screens do make sense, because they are so easy to clean. I don't need them anywhere else though.
- LoveMortuus 2y agoI wonder what an experience of using a touchscreen with tactile feedback built in, I think it could be done with flexible display and then an array of haptic engines/vibro motors or something like that, perhaps even just magnetic array with plates. All of this, so that the display could actually provide location specific tactile feedback (unlike just the whole device shaking).