[HN Gopher] Why I can no longer recommend a Mac to fellow blind ...
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Why I can no longer recommend a Mac to fellow blind computer users
Author : devinprater
Score : 147 points
Date : 2023-10-08 19:59 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.applevis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.applevis.com)
| fatih-erikli wrote:
| [flagged]
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Apple is the best brand accessibility wise, unless we are
| talking about some insignificant niche products
| fatih-erikli wrote:
| This is correct. Apple is first when it comes to
| accessibility. However accessibility isn't invented for the
| blind.
| pxc wrote:
| Accessibility isn't a homogenous, fungible quantity. Calling
| something 'the best brand accessibility wise' is barely even
| meaningful, let alone useful.
|
| Accessibility is a qualitative issue, and disabled people's
| needs are varied enough that many accessibility tools are
| only helpful or usable to a subset of them.
| jitl wrote:
| There's so much wrong with your post:
|
| - Blind users and other disabled people are often
| professionals.
|
| - Apple is very much a personal computer company. They make
| iMovie, Photos, Apple TV, Pages, etc for personal end users. If
| you've used some of Apple's pro apps like Final Cut or Logic,
| you'd know they can design for pro users - but macOS as a whole
| is the opposite, getting more simplistic over time as they
| cater more to consumers. The Mac is a good pro computer _IN
| SPITE_ of it being designed for consumers.
|
| - many people in the blind community are dishonest? Wtf. This
| just sounds like discrimination to me.
| fatih-erikli wrote:
| [flagged]
| pxc wrote:
| > as a professional in the IT industry, my recommendation
| to the my colleagues, don't fall for someone if they say
| they have a disability and demand something. It's not our
| concern.
|
| Supplying your end users the tools they need to do their
| work is absolutely your job. What do you even mean?
| tmpX7dMeXU wrote:
| Im going to pile on here and implore you as best I can to
| check your priors here. You are coming across as incredibly
| rude and unhinged. I'm sorry that a blind person...hurt you
| at some point? I don't even know. But your behaviour is
| frankly unacceptable.
| fatih-erikli wrote:
| I didn't get hurt, however they have a ratio of
| disability. Dishonesty starts at that point. Some see
| 10%, some 20%, etc. Anyone in that community will need to
| weigh their morality whether they really see or not, this
| is why I don't recommend my collages to spend their time
| and being emotionally vulnerable in that topic.
| upon_drumhead wrote:
| I'm confused as to your statement. So you're saying blind
| computer users shouldn't be recommending what they feel works
| for them to fellow blind computer users? Only people who are
| getting paid to review should recommend experience?
|
| Also, are you saying that blind computer users can't use a wide
| assortment of computers? I have a buddy who is blind and is a
| developer and they happen to have a top end MacBook Pro and
| uses it quite well. I don't think that calling them a -low-
| user makes any sense at all.
| fatih-erikli wrote:
| end user = low user. I may be wrong in this definition. Feel
| free to interpret my statements in any way you'd like. I
| observed a lot. There are so much inconsistency their
| behaviors, plus dishonesty.
|
| I feel happy for your blind fellow and respect.
| n_sweep wrote:
| this is an incredibly bizarre prejudice to hold
| miki123211 wrote:
| I have been a regular Mac user for over two years (MacBook Air
| M1) and the issue is far less severe than this person claims.
|
| It used to be a much bigger problem around Mac OS 12, but even
| then, Cmd + option + q (quit and keep windows) would solve it
| pretty quickly.
|
| Voice Over has a lot of issues, but so do Windows screen readers,
| and as a Mac user, I can at least decide to postpone an
| accessibility-breaking update, something which Windows doesn't
| let me do. Such an update was one of the main reasons why I
| switched OSes.
| devinprater wrote:
| I'm glad you don't experience this anymore. I wish I could say
| the same. Of course, I have a 2019 MBP so no M1, and I'm not
| rich enough to just go out there and buy it when I hear it
| effects even M2 models. I don't bet an issues that hault
| productivity that much.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Not blind, I have no experience at all with any of this. However
| what I found quite impressive was witnessing an Apple Store
| employee guide a blind person through voice over. That to me
| implies that Apple at least trains some folks in the stores on
| accessibility features.
| devinprater wrote:
| Yep. Sometimes they even hire blind people to do it. There was
| one at the Apple Store I went to when I first was looking into
| a Mac. Years later, I heard he left though, moving into another
| field.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I was expecting some sort of systemic problem across the
| operating system, but it seems to be just one specific bug in
| WebKit--though there is also a link to "our recent post on
| problems in macOS Sonoma and the replies", and though it does
| sound to be a rather debilitating bug for affected users, and
| though this sort of bug making it to production _can_ be a
| symptom of systemic problems in the organisation.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| One fault can leave a platform 100% broken.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| I am curious what he's going to recommend instead. AFAIK, Macs
| are the best out there (by quite some way) for accessibility.
| shados wrote:
| Windows with JAWS or NVDA is fairly mainstream, and it's
| accessibility features are pretty well understood and
| supported. VoiceOver less so. That only covers one facet of
| accessibility of course, but they have like 80 percent market
| share in that segment.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Last time I saw a poll of blind CS/engineering students across
| NA, the wide majority preferred JAWS as a screen reader. That
| implies Windows.
| devinprater wrote:
| Most of us use Windows.
| devinprater wrote:
| Blog post from Applevis Subtitle: Why I Can No Longer Recommend a
| Mac to Fellow Blind Computer Users
|
| I don't mean to editorialize, the title was just too long for the
| title box.
| dang wrote:
| Yup, the limit is 80 chars so it needs to be chopped. In this
| case the suffix is more informative than the prefix so I've
| swapped out "We deserve better from Apple" above. Thanks!
| [deleted]
| tmpX7dMeXU wrote:
| I certainly don't want to discount from the point this article is
| making, but as someone with a significant visual impairment, but
| that is not completely blind, I legitimately can't imagine using
| anything that's not macOS these days. This is coming from someone
| that grew up using Windows, and had an extensive Linux
| phase...including Gentoo.
|
| Screen readers are a bit of a lightning rod for accessible
| technology interest, almost entirely because most people have
| some sort of sick curiosity. "How can someone use a computer so
| differently to the way that I do!?". Of course, most of these
| people stop here, never bothering to try using a screen reader to
| navigate whatever they're making. They might open VoiceOver,
| realise they don't know how to intuitively use it, and fumble
| around with trying to close it again. This tends to have the
| effect of sucking any motivation out of the room. Most people
| won't then go and meaningfully improve their screen reader
| experience, but they also won't think to address any other
| accessibility shortcomings, especially visual ones, because
| "blind people use screen readers!" Is the pervasive meme.
|
| This is part of why I am all in all so happy with how Apple has
| been going in this space lately. An obvious result of co-design /
| consultation, or dare I say it...hiring people with disabilities.
| Addressing accessibility concerns that the stereotypical SV
| techie has never even heard of.
| rock_artist wrote:
| From developer POV this is real frustrating. This seems like
| something that makes bad experience but at least in the post
| there are no reproducible steps. Also when a bug shows only
| sometimes, if it's rare enough, sometimes it's really hard to
| nail down. I guess Apple's metrics are superior to mine. Yet,
| sometimes just catching an issue is tough.
|
| The other complication with Apple is the fact that sometimes it
| might be needed for multiple teams to fix an issue (eg. WebKit,
| Safari and VoiceOver/Accessibility) so they all have their own
| apple ways which might not be trivial as a single team fixing an
| issue.
|
| And least, yeah, it might just be prioritization as there are
| some bugs that are with us for years or even regressions between
| each OS iteration that stays forever.
| devinprater wrote:
| I tried using a mac (2019 MBP, 8 GB RAM, 4 Thunderbolt ports) at
| work. I could create course material in Ulysses. I could manage
| files and folders with Finder. I could even slowly navigate
| through Moodle's stupid web interface. But then I had to start
| using Google Docs, and a Salesforce instance. Google Docs works
| reasonably well on Windows. I even gave a good enough of a bug
| report for the orca maintainer to make it more responsive on
| Linux with chrome. But Mac? I can't even begin to describe how
| messy it is. VoiceOver goes in and out of the document, the
| VoiceOver cursor gets stuck on menu items, that kind of messed
| up, where even if I want to download the document for offline
| usage, it's just... Frustrating enough for me to throw away the
| MacBook, not (entirely) literally, and grab the windows machine
| again.
|
| Salesforce is slightly better except when you get to a table of
| record entries, that table is empty. Simply, nothing there.
| Luckily, I can use firefox to get around this. Or I can simply go
| back to windows and not have _any_ of these problems. The web is
| snappy again, there is no freezing up or not responding or busy
| messages, nothing. It, amazingly for Windows, just works. And
| that 's a shame for Apple.
| alib wrote:
| I'm very sorry to hear about your experience. That really sucks.
| The fact we have a thriving browser ecosystem has got to count
| for something though. Could you recommend people use Firefox
| instead?
|
| I have come to respect Apple in recent years for their focus on
| and promotion of accessibility within the industry. They are
| leading where others have often abrogated the responsibility to
| build inclusive products. We should celebrate this.
|
| Therefore this headline made me sad. I appreciate sometimes
| drastic measures are required to persuade those with power to use
| it to change things, and it does sound like this bug has been
| around for too long. If Apple are serious about accessibility
| they need to fix it.
|
| I have read that the relentless release cycle at Apple does lead
| to bugs like this never getting fixed. I hope this post gets
| upvoted enough that someone with influence sees it, and ensures
| that this one is different. Good luck!
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(page generated 2023-10-08 23:00 UTC)