5 ms·
It'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
by miki123211 2y ago
It'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.
- aftbit 2y agoI like the strategy used by multi-function displays in plane cockpits. They have physical buttons along the side that can trigger different actions, labelled by text and icons on the screen alongside the button. This allows you to find and press the button even if there is turbulence or engine vibrations making it hard to use a touchscreen.
- kragen 2y agoTouchpads, you mean? Touchpads are waterproof and washable, like membrane keyboards, which is a real plus in the kitchen. Also they're cheap as fuck.
- eternityforest 2y agoWhat about touch buttons recessed by a few millimeters to prevent accidents, with braille on the face plate? Touch controls have one really big advantage, they have no switch to wear out, and no opening to get water damaged. Touch might be a worse UX, at least to highly tactile people who are aware of their fingers often, but it can last decades with the cheapest imaginable hardware.