[HN Gopher] Apple announces new accessibility features, includin...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple announces new accessibility features, including Eye Tracking
Author : dmd
Score : 242 points
Date : 2024-05-15 14:22 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| dagmx wrote:
| This is one major advantage to Apple sharing a foundation across
| all their devices. Vision Pro introduced eye tracking to their
| systems as a new input modality, and now it trickles down to
| their other platforms.
|
| I am surprised CarPlay didn't have voice control before this
| though.
| callwhendone wrote:
| It would be amazing if it gets carried over to the Mac.
| simlevesque wrote:
| CarPlay devices aren't really powerful.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| CarPlay is rendered by the phone itself, so it's not strictly
| a function of how powerful the car infotainment is. You've
| been able to talk to Siri since the beginning of CarPlay so
| additional voice control is really just an accessibility
| thing
| joezydeco wrote:
| Some cars already have a voice control button on the wheel
| for their existing system which, if done correctly, is
| overriden by Siri+CarPlay. Which is _really_ nice when it
| works.
| Tagbert wrote:
| CarPlay devices (car components) are essentially playing a
| streaming video of a hidden display generated by the phone.
| CarPlay also lets those devices send back touch events to
| trigger buttons and other interactions. Very little process
| is done on the vehicle.
|
| BTW if you are plugged in to CarPlay and take a screen shot,
| it will include the hidden CarPlay screen.
| jsheard wrote:
| Is this really likely to be downstream of the Vision Pro
| implementation? I would think that eye-tracking with
| specialized hardware at a fixed position very close to the eye
| is very different to doing it at a distance with a general
| purpose front facing camera.
| iloveyouocean wrote:
| The 'tracking eyes' part is different, but once you have eye
| position data, the 'how the eyes interact with the interface'
| could be very similar.
| dmicah wrote:
| Typically eye-trackers work by illuminating the eyes with
| near infrared light and using infrared cameras. This creates
| a higher contrast image of the pupils, etc. I assume Apple is
| doing this in the Vision Pro. Eye-tracking can also be done
| with just visible light, though. Apple has the benefit of
| knowing where all the user interface elements are on screen,
| so eye-tracking in this on the iPhone or iPad doesn't need to
| be high precision. Knowledge of the position of the items can
| help to reduce the uncertainty of what is being fixated on.
| neverokay wrote:
| So there isn't much more to it than getting a good
| resolution image of the eye from any distance, every
| millisecond.
|
| Precision is the issue because we are mostly moving our
| eyes in about 8 directions, there's no precision because we
| don't know how to measure focusing of our eye lens with a
| camera yet (unless that too is just a matter of getting a
| picture).
|
| Squinting would be the closest thing to physically
| expressing focusing. So the camera needs to know I'm
| looking left with my eye, followed by a squint to achieve
| precision. Seems stressful though.
|
| Gonna need AI just to do noise cancelling of involuntary
| things your eyes do like pupil dilation, blinking.
| devinprater wrote:
| I wonder what new voices will be added to VoiceOver? We blind
| people never, ever thought Eloquence, an old TTS engine from 20
| years ago now, would ever come to iOS. And yet, here it is in iOS
| 17. I wouldn't be surprised to see DecTalk, or more Siri voices.
| More Braille features is amazing, and they even mentioned the
| Mac! VoiceOver for Mac is notoriously never given as much love as
| VoiceOver for iOS is, so most blind people still use Windows,
| even though they have iPhones.
|
| I was expecting to see much better image descriptions, but
| they've already announced a _ton_ of new stuff for plenty other
| disabilities. Having haptic music will be awesome even for me,
| adding another sense to the music. There are just so many new
| accessibility stuff, and I can 't wait to see what all is really
| new in VoiceOver, since there's always new things not talked
| about in WWDC or release notes. I'm hoping that, one day, we get
| a tutorial for VoiceOver, like TalkBack on Android has, since
| there are so many commands, gestures, and settings that a new
| user never learns unless they learn to learn about them.
| bombcar wrote:
| The image description stuff is already surprisingly good - I
| noticed when I got a photo text while driving and it described
| it well enough for me to know what it was.
| skunkworker wrote:
| Same, a family member send a photo while I was driving and
| over Carplay it was described fairly accurately.
| slau wrote:
| It's sometimes awesome, and often extremely basic. "Contact
| sent you a picture of a group of people at an airport".
| Amazing. "Contact sent you a screenshot of a social media
| post". Useless. We know iOS can select text in pictures, so
| Siri can clearly read it. It knows it's SoMe, so why not
| give me the headline?
| asadotzler wrote:
| My friends that use synthetic voices prefer cleanliness of the
| older and familiar voices. One friend listens at about 900 WPM
| in skim mode and none of the more realistic voices work well at
| those rates.
| stacktrust wrote:
| iOS 17 Image Descriptions are quite good, but audio descriptions
| don't seem to work on non-Pro devices, even though text
| descriptions are being shown on the screen and the audio menu is
| present and activated. Is that a bug?
|
| Even on Pro devices, audio image descriptions stop working after
| a few cycles of switching between Image Magnifier and apps/home.
| This can be fixed by restarting the app and disabling/enabling
| audio image descriptions, but that breaks the use case when an
| iPhone is dedicated to running only Image Magnifier + audio
| descriptions, via remote MDM with no way for the local blind user
| to restart the app.
|
| On-device iOS image descriptions could be improved if the user
| could help train the local image recognition by annotating photos
| or videos with text descriptions. For a blind person, this would
| enable locally-specific audio descriptions like "bedroom door",
| "kitchen fridge" or specific food dishes.
|
| Are there other iOS or Android AR apps which offer audio
| descriptions of live video from the camera?
| s3p wrote:
| I wonder if this announcement had anything to do with the
| bombshells OpenAI and Google dropped this week. Couldn't this
| have been part of WWDC next month?
| terramex wrote:
| Tomorrow (today in some timezones) is Global Accesibility
| Awareness Day:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Accessibility_Awarene...
| Tagbert wrote:
| As Terramex pointed out this is tied to a particular, relevant
| event.
|
| It's also pretty common for Apple to preannounce some smaller
| features that are too specialized to be featured in the WWDC
| announcements. This gives them some attention when they would
| be lost and buried in WWDC footnotes.
|
| It is also probably an indication that WWDC will be full of new
| features and only the most impactful will be part of the
| keynote.
| kergonath wrote:
| They do it every year at the same time. Also, it's a small
| announcement, not a keynote or the kind of fanfare we have at
| WWDC or the September events. This does not seem calibrated to
| be effective in an advertising war with another company. All
| this to say, probably not.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I think it's more of "clearing the decks" for stuff that didn't
| make the cut for WWDC. I assume WWDC is going to be all about
| AI and they couldn't find a good spot to put this announcement.
| "Clearing the decks" isn't a very kind way to refer to this
| accessibility tech since Apple has always been better than
| almost everyone else when it comes to accessibility. I don't
| see this as "we don't care, just announce it early" as much as
| "we can't fit this in so let's announce it early".
| xnx wrote:
| I love accessibility features because they might be the last
| features developed solely with the benefit of the user in mind.
| So many other app/os features are designed to steal your
| attention or gradually nerf usefulness.
| stacktrust wrote:
| _> developed solely with the benefit of the user in mind_
|
| Hopefully accessibility features are never artificially
| segmented to higher priced devices.
| corps_and_code wrote:
| I wonder if that would be legal, at least in the US. That
| feels like it'd be a violation of the ADA?
| Loughla wrote:
| At least in the US, they kind of can't be. The disability
| community is pretty up front about lawsuits.
| stacktrust wrote:
| iOS 17 audio image descriptions for blind people via Image
| Magnifier should work on all iPhones, but do not work on
| iPhone SE3 and iPhone 11 Pro. Audio image descriptions do
| work in iPhone 12 Pro. Lidar in 12 Pro increases accuracy,
| but should not be mandatory. Hopefully this is a bug that
| can be fixed, since text descriptions were still functional
| on the lower-end devices.
|
| Source: purchased devices until finding one that worked,
| since Apple docs indicated the feature should work on all
| iPhones that can run iOS 17.
|
| Edit: audio descriptions in Magnifier are non-functional on
| iPad Air, working on M2 iPad Pro.
| pxc wrote:
| That's because the ADA has no enforcement mechanism other
| than lawsuits, isn't it? Our whole legal disability rights
| infrastructure is designed to be driven by lawsuits, and
| sits inert if nobody sues.
| snoman wrote:
| Every attention thief is absolutely thrilled at the idea of
| tracking your eyes. Let's all imagine the day where the YouTube
| free tier pauses ads when you're not actively looking at them.
|
| Shit. I'm turning into one of those negative downers. I'm
| sorry. I've had too much internet today.
| Tagbert wrote:
| If this is at all like the eye tracking in Vision Pro, it is
| only available to the OS and apps are not given access to the
| data.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| for now - it is naive to think this is safe
| sroussey wrote:
| Eye tracking has been on iOS for many years (as an option
| for faceid called attention).
| stacktrust wrote:
| Avoidable via iPhone SE3 and iPad Air, which both use
| TouchID.
| ben_w wrote:
| System one is, but advertisers could always roll their own
| and see if they can get away with "you can only view this
| content if you give us permission to use your camera".
| LordKeren wrote:
| This would not pass the App Review process
| favorited wrote:
| At least on iOS, I can't imagine that happening - apps
| are not allowed to demand you grant permissions unrelated
| to the actual functionality. From App Review Guidelines
| (5.1.1) Data Collection and Storage, (ii) Access:
|
| > Apps must respect the user's permission settings and
| not attempt to manipulate, trick, or force people to
| consent to unnecessary data access. For example, apps
| that include the ability to post photos to a social
| network must not also require microphone access before
| allowing the user to upload photos.
|
| Lots of iOS apps today _really_ want to mine your address
| book, and constantly spam you with dialogs to enable it,
| but they don 't go as far as disabling other features
| until you grant them access, because they'd get rejected
| once someone noticed.
| amlib wrote:
| It's not that hard to come with ways to circumvent system
| restrictions, after all, advertisers are a fierce
| adversary and have shown many clever ways of invading
| users privacy in web browsers and mobile apps. In the
| case of eye tracking I could see a situation where the
| system perhaps feeds the "malicious" app in question with
| a hint of which widget is being currently gazed by the
| user. You could then just build a giant grid of invisible
| widgets covering the whole app window and use that to
| reconstruct the all the eye tracking happening inside
| your app.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| The system doesn't supply data like widget highlight
| states to apps for exactly that reason.
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| Fortunately apps in the EU don't have to pass though
| Apple's anticompetitive review process, so developers are
| free to ignore that rule if they simply distribute the
| app via an alternative store.
|
| Unfortunately, poor Americans cannot taste the freedom
| that Europeans have to be abused by developers.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| Until people complain that Apple is being anti-competitive
| by not making vision tracking open, or allowing third-party
| eye-tracking controls, etc. etc.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Wait for human attention detection to become mandatory to
| view DRMed content on the telescreen.
| carl_dr wrote:
| Watch the Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits", to
| see how this might end up.
| jonpurdy wrote:
| I often use them to get around bad UI/UX (like using Reduce
| Motion), or to make devices more useful (Color Filters (red)
| for using at night).
|
| Even outside of this, even able-bodied folks can be disabled
| due to illness, surgery, injury, etc. So it's great to see
| Apple continuing to support accessibility.
| gerry_shaw wrote:
| The red color filter for outside when trying to preserve
| night vision is a great tip. Some apps have this built-in but
| much better to have the OS change it everywhere.
|
| Recommend creating a Shortcut to toggle this setting.
| throwanem wrote:
| You can also add it to the accessibility shortcut,
| available anywhere by triple-clicking the power button.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The issue I've seen when the app itself offers a red filter
| is if that app calls an OS native widget like a keyboard
| does not get filtered. The system level accessibility
| feature does filter the OS widget. I would almost rather
| the app's setting to just enable the OS filter, but I can
| understand why that might not be possible.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > Recommend creating a Shortcut to toggle this setting.
|
| Huh?
|
| It's not built-in?
|
| Android (or at least Moto) has it for years, auto enable on
| the schedule or the sunrise/sunset.
| ben_w wrote:
| There's a built in "night shift", but that just changes
| the colour temperature, it doesn't make everything
| monochrome red.
| carl_dr wrote:
| iOS has also had "Night Shift" for several years. The
| parent is talking about a full on red colour filter, like
| astronomers might use.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| Kinda feels like you could've done more of a cursory
| glance to see what functionality was actually being
| talked about before going for the "Android already does
| this!!" comment.
| PaulStatezny wrote:
| Not just for outside, but also at public gatherings like
| concerts! I went to a concert last month and used a red
| color filter to record a couple short videos without being
| a big distraction to the audience behind me.
|
| Dim backlight + Red color filter can make the screen almost
| invisible to those around you.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Accessibility features stand out as user-centric developments,
| love that
| ljm wrote:
| I don't love that solid UX gets pushed under the accessibility
| rug, as an option you might never find.
|
| I don't care how cynical it sounds, user experience became user
| exploitation a long time ago. Big Tech have been running that
| gimmick at too-big-to-fail scale for the last decade or so.
| philistine wrote:
| Accessibility benefits everyone, but in the basics you're
| right. Too many simple straightforward options are now
| strictly inside accessibility. At least on the Apple side.
|
| And don't get me started on hidden command line settings.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| I'm here to intentionally get you started on hidden CLI
| settings. Learn me somethin'!
| nottorp wrote:
| > Too many simple straightforward options are now strictly
| inside accessibility.
|
| <cough> Reduce Motion. Is it an accessibility feature or
| does it just get rid of an annoyance and is good for
| everyone?
| ornornor wrote:
| Saves battery too along with cross fade transitions :)
| gumby wrote:
| > Too many simple straightforward options are now strictly
| inside accessibility
|
| From outside, it feels like these are the only people with
| the freedom to improve the user experience at all. So they
| have to hide their work in the Accessibility preferences.
| PaulStatezny wrote:
| You're getting a lot of agreement from other HN users, but
| I'm not sure it's fair to criticize Apple for putting these
| kinds of features under Accessibility.
|
| There's nothing that inherently "locks out" people who
| don't have a recognized disability from exploring these
| features. Furthermore, most of Apple's "accessibility"
| features are related to Vision/Hearing/etc (and categorized
| as such), so I think it's reasonable to consider them
| accessibility features.
|
| Clearly based on other comments here, plenty of people
| discover these features and find them useful.
| hbn wrote:
| The iPhone has a hidden accessibility setting where you can
| map and double and/or triple tap of the back of your phone to
| a handful of actions. I use this to trigger Reachability (the
| feature that brings the entire UI halfway down the screen so
| you can reach buttons at the top) because phone screens are
| so damn big that I can't reach the opposite top corner with
| my thumb even on my 13 mini without hand gymnastics. And the
| normal Reachability gesture is super unreliable to trigger
| ever since they got rid of the front Touch ID home button.
| ornornor wrote:
| Double tap is reachability for me and triple tap is to make
| the display very dim so that at night at the lowest
| brightness setting, I can get it even lower. It resets
| after a while so even if I forget to switch it off my
| screen won't stay dim for the next few days while I wonder
| why it's so damn dark.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Funny, I was just thinking it was so that they can get more
| attention-economy eyeballs for ads.
| 0xEF wrote:
| This will happen. These features are always ushered in as
| ways to make _someone 's_ life easier, and often that is
| exactly what it does, for a time, before some product manager
| figures out how they can maximize profit with it.
|
| Growth at all costs, I guess.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| Don't say "I guess" as if you aren't the one making the
| rather baseless accusation. What other accessibility
| features have been abused?
| lucb1e wrote:
| Wouldn't a lot of the companies that build in accessibility do
| it from a viewpoint of gaining an even wider reach and/or a
| better public image?
|
| I don't see optimizing for that as bad. If they think we'll
| love the product more by making it better for a given audience,
| especially if I'm in that audience, I'm happy. Does that mean
| this company now gets richer? Perhaps, and that's fine by me
| badbart14 wrote:
| I definitely get a good amount of motion sickness when using my
| phone while in a car so I'm super interested about the motion
| sickness cues and if they'll work. The dots look like they may
| get in the way a bit but I'm willing to take that tradeoff. My
| current car motion sickness mitigation system is these glasses
| that have liquid in them that supposedly help your ears feel the
| motion of the car better (and make you look like Harry Potter)
| Shank wrote:
| > Vehicle Motion Cues is a new experience for iPhone and iPad
| that can help reduce motion sickness for passengers in moving
| vehicles.
|
| This excites me so, so much! I can't really use my phone as a
| passenger in a car without getting motion sick after 1-2 minutes.
| This seems like it might be a promising thing to try.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Have you noticed any correlation between how hungry you are and
| how fast motion sickness kicks in?
| Shank wrote:
| It's really interesting you say this. Is this a known
| correlation? I feel like now that you mention it, it's
| incredibly fast if I'm hungry.
| toast0 wrote:
| I went on a cruise, and had significant (for me) motion
| sickness that only got better once I ate --- of course, I
| was avoiding eating because I didn't feel well, so that
| seems like the wrong choice.
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| It is a known correlation.
| astrange wrote:
| I'm not sure why, but I feel like I only get motion sickness
| in the back of Priuses. It must be something about their
| braking curve.
|
| I don't sit in enough EVs to tell if they're the same.
| 121789 wrote:
| Teslas are especially bad for me. I think it's the rough
| suspension and fast acceleration/deceleration
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The instant-on power and braking takes some getting used
| to. For the folks who have trouble mastering it, my
| recommendation is chill mode. It has a much softer
| acceleration profile, mostly eliminating the harsh starts
| you might be experiencing.
| yc-kraln wrote:
| Toyota's hybrids are _the worst_. I never get motion sick
| except as a passenger in any Toyota hybrid
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Some people never really learn how to use one-pedal
| driving, so they end up just going back and forth between
| accelerating and decelerating. That'll make me motion sick
| in a hurry, and I bet that is fairly universal (among
| people prone to motion sickness in cars, that is). So in
| that sense, any EV or hybrid is potentially a problem,
| depending on the driver.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I suspect most people's interaction with Prius' are Uber
| rides. Maybe Uber drivers just get bad habits from the
| platform incentives (drive fast = get more rides)
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| I have not. For me, it does not matter. The ride begins - the
| motion sickness kicks in
| danaris wrote:
| I regularly drive two family members around--one gets motion
| sick _much_ faster and more frequently when hungry, while the
| other gets motion sick the same either way.
|
| Does make me wonder what the difference is there.
| deinonychus wrote:
| Yes, sort of. I don't necessarily have to feel _hungry_ but
| if I'm on an empty stomach or just haven't eaten in a while,
| the odds I get motion sickness are much higher.
|
| If I'm riding somewhere to go get dinner, I have to sit in
| the front passenger seat. After dinner with a full belly?
| Throw me in the back and I'll be fine.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| I have motion sickness... It's so hard to movearound for me and
| I am still not able to find what works best for me
| nulld3v wrote:
| [delayed]
| tootie wrote:
| Quibble but this isn't "eye tracking" it's "gaze tracking". Eye
| tracking is detecting where your eyes are. Gaze tracking is what
| you're looking at.
| crancher wrote:
| Well then it's both?
| tootie wrote:
| Could be, but not necessarily. Eye tracking usually means
| it's tracking the eyes of one or more people in a video. Gaze
| tracking usually requires your eyes stay pretty steady and
| close to the tracker.
| astrange wrote:
| This is how I feel about "face recognition" (it should mean
| recognizing whether something is a face or not), but it is
| common to use eye tracking this way.
| roughly wrote:
| Accessibility settings are really a gold mine on iOS for device
| customization (yes, I agree, they shouldn't be limited to
| accessibility).
|
| I'm particularly interested in the motion cues and the color
| filters for CarPlay - I have color filters set up to enable every
| night as kind of a Turbo-night shift mode (deep orange-red color
| shift), would love to do the same for CarPlay.
|
| I also completely forgot iOS had a magnifier built in!
| ryandrake wrote:
| Accessibility features tend to be superpowers though, and I'm
| glad Apple gates them behind permissions and opt-ins. We all
| know of applications who try to trick the user into granting
| them inappropriate access to the device through the
| Accessibility APIs. I think DropBox _still_ begs you to grant
| them Accessibility access so its tendrils can do who-knows-what
| to your system.
|
| With great power comes great responsibility.
| roughly wrote:
| It varies. Things like keyboard control or that kind of
| thing, absolutely, but mostly I've used it for stuff like
| "don't make an animated transition every time I change pages
| like an overcaffienated George Lucas" or "actually make night
| shift shift enough to be useful at night". I also use the
| background sounds to augment noise cancellation while taking
| a nap. All of those are just useful things or personal
| settings, not necessarily attack vectors.
| burntwater wrote:
| Guaranteed that marketers are salivating at the idea of eye
| tracking on apps and website. It's an amazing feature that
| absolutely needs to be gatekept.
| astrange wrote:
| Well, they aren't really limited to accessibility, but they are
| hidden there. It's sort of like a convenient excuse to get UI
| designers off your back if you want to ship customization.
| emehrkay wrote:
| Eye tracking coupled with the show grid feature would seem like
| using a computer the way that people do in movies
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxigSW9MbY8
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Eye Gaze devices(tablet with camera + software) cost around $20K,
| even if it offers 1/4 of the features this is good news for those
| who can't afford it.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Don't be ridiculous. Solid hardware and software combos for
| windows cost a small fraction of that. The convenient and
| decent Tobii PCEye costs like $1,250 and a very nice TMS5 mini
| is under $2,000. Your bullshit was off by at least an order of
| magnitude.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| my first thought regarding eye-tracking: "whose accessibility to
| what|whom?"
| devmor wrote:
| Do you have another idea beyond the accessibility of Users
| without fine motor control to the phone's screen?
| smegsicle wrote:
| which ads you are looking at
| devmor wrote:
| I am excited for Vocal Cues - my main frustration with Siri is
| how poorly it comprehends even explicit instructions.
|
| One thing I wish Apple would implement is some kind of gesture
| control. The camera can detect fine details of face movement, it
| would be nice if that were leveraged to track hands that aren't
| touching the screen.
|
| For an example, if I have my iPhone or iPad on the desk in front
| of me, and a push notification that I don't need obstructs the
| content on the screen, I would love to be able to swipe my hand
| up towards the phone to dismiss it.
| dakial1 wrote:
| Eye tracking is not an accessibility feature, it is an
| advertising optimization feature disguised as an accessibility
| feature.
| devmor wrote:
| Eye tracking is absolutely an accessibility feature. Just
| because you don't need it, and it can be abused, does not mean
| it isn't an absolutely game changing feature for some people.
| nofunsir wrote:
| He didn't say it wasn't an accessibility feature, just that
| it was disguised as one.
|
| Just because it's not a game changing feature for some
| people, doesn't mean its primary function isn't advertising.
| devmor wrote:
| Something being disguised as something explicitly implies
| it is not that thing.
| yreg wrote:
| The user did say verbatim "Eye tracking is not an
| accessibility feature"
| jcotton42 wrote:
| My presumption is that apps will not be able to access this
| data, at least without some sort of permission gate.
| sroussey wrote:
| Indeed they haven't for all the years it was limited to
| FaceId's attention option.
| simonw wrote:
| Apple are very good about not making this kind of thing
| available to apps that don't have an explicit reason to need
| it.
| resource_waste wrote:
| I love reading comments on Apple ads.
|
| The optimism and fandom are a good reminder of the human
| condition.
| jshier wrote:
| No optimism, simply facts based on the lack of APIs for
| accessing any of this data. Since this is just a
| preannouncement (APIs will come at WWDC next month), we
| can't tell yet, but Apple's previous system attention
| tracking was never available in public APIs.
| simonw wrote:
| I stand by my statement. Have you seen the limits placed on
| VisionOS apps regarding eye tracking data?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It is preferable to the reflexive cynicism and nihilism
| that is so prevalent online. At least the supporters have
| put some thought into their argument.
| chefandy wrote:
| Baseless pessimism is exactly as useful as baseless
| optimism.
| joshstrange wrote:
| You can say a lot of negative true things about Apple but this
| is just silly. There is no way Apple is going to expose that
| data to underlying apps in the same way they refused to do it
| in Vision Pro. I'd bet a good bit of money it works the same
| way where it's a layer on top of the app that the app can't
| access and from the video it looks like that's exactly how it
| works.
| Aloisius wrote:
| It allows people with ALS to navigate their device with their
| eyes.
|
| Microsoft added a similar feature to Windows about seven years
| ago.
| rado wrote:
| They keep announcing these bombastic accessibility features while
| simple things like tabbing remain frustratingly broken. The macOS
| "allow this app to access that" dialog supports shift+tab, but
| not tab.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-your-keyboard-l...
| - Keyboard navigation
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/navigate-your-mac-u...
| - Full Keyboard Access (accessibility feature, goes beyond just
| tabbing between elements)
|
| It's annoying that tabbing between UI elements is off by
| default on macOS. It's one of the first things I turn on with a
| new mac.
| Ocha wrote:
| Music haptics can be a cool way to teach someone how to dance and
| "feel the beat"
| NeuroCoder wrote:
| There's a lot of interesting things we can do with haptics
| since they're relatively cheap to put in stuff. Hopefully
| accessibility gets the software and applications further along
| soon
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Using haptics in music to enhance rhythm perception and dance
| skills. Sounds really cool!
| burntwater wrote:
| I'm severely hearing impaired and enjoy going to dance classes
| - swing, salsa, etc. If I'm standing still, I can easily tune
| into the beat. But once I start moving, I quickly lose it on
| many songs; dance studios aren't known for having large sound
| systems with substantial bass. I don't know that this specific
| setup would fix anything -- it would need some way of syncing
| to the instructor's iPhone that is connected via bluetooth to
| the studio's little portable speaker. But it's a step in the
| right direction.
|
| While on the topic, I can hear music but almost never
| understand lyrics; at best I might catch the key chorus phrase
| (example: the words "born in the USA" are literally the only
| words I understand in that song).
|
| A few months ago I discovered the "karaoke" feature on Apple
| Music, in which it displays the lyrics in time with the music.
| This have been game changing for me. I'm catching up on decades
| worth of music where I never had any idea what the lyrics are
| (filthy, that's what they are. So many songs about sex!). It
| has made exercising on the treadmill, elliptical, etc actually
| enjoyable.
| simonw wrote:
| macOS has had a version of eye tracking for a while, it's really
| fun to try out.
|
| System preferences -> Accessibility -> Pointer Control
|
| Then turn on the "Head pointer" option.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| VisionOS has this too. I mapped it to a triple click of the
| button for when eye tracking becomes inaccurate.
| alphabetting wrote:
| google yesterday also open sourced their accessibility feature
| for android and windows that controls cursor using head movements
| and facial gestures
|
| https://github.com/google/project-gameface
| mdm_ wrote:
| My first thought upon seeing the Haptic Music feature is to
| wonder how long until they make compatible headphones and I can
| relive my high school years, walking around listening to nu-metal
| and hip-hop with a Panasonic Shockwave walkman.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| My wife is a hospice nurse and from time to time she'll have a
| patient without any ability to communicate except their eyes
| (think ALS) - for these folks in their final days/weeks of life
| this will be a godsend. There are specialized eye-tracking
| devices, but they're expensive and good luck getting them
| approved by insurance in time for the folks in need near the end
| of their lives.
| EasyMark wrote:
| how can I make sure it's off? Is it off by default?
| yreg wrote:
| Yes
| tallytarik wrote:
| > "We believe deeply in the transformative power of innovation to
| enrich lives," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO.
|
| Does this line actually mean anything? Press releases are so
| weird.
| cush wrote:
| All these features look amazing! That car motion sickness feature
| especially. Can't wait to try it!
| petre wrote:
| At least I put off the phone while I was in the car. Not the
| case now. Thank you Apple but I'd rather be sick while looking
| at your phone in a car.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Very curious to see how well eye tracking works behind a
| motorcycle visor. Thick leather gloves, bike noise, and a touch
| screen and audio interface are not much fun.
| yreg wrote:
| Accessibility is for everyone, including you, if you live long
| enough. And the alternative is worse. So your choice is death or
| you are going to use accessibility features. - Siracusa
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I aimed for the upvote button but they're so tiny that my fat
| finger hit the downvote button by accident and then I had to
| retry the action. This is what people mean by accessibility is
| for everyone all of the time.
| vasco wrote:
| Zoom the website in, the browser has accessibility built in
| and hackernews zooms in fairly well.
|
| Edit: I seem to be missing something as this is getting
| downvoted. I genuinely cannot use HN under 150% zoom so
| thought this was a basic comment.
| uoaei wrote:
| Accessibility isn't just about possibility, it's about
| ergonomics.
|
| You _could_ integrate a differential equation by lining
| rocks up in a large desert as a computer, but you wouldn 't
| say that solution is "accessible" to a human in the same
| way it would be with a CPU, a monitor, and functioning
| sight.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm a believer in accessibility features. The difficulty is often
| in testing.
|
| I use SimDaltonism, to test for color-blindness accessibility,
| and, in the last app I wrote, I added a "long press help"
| feature, that responds to long-presses on items, by opening a
| popover, containing the label and hint. Makes testing much
| easier, and doubles as user help.
| gpm wrote:
| I wonder if Vision Pro has enough microphones to do the acoustic
| camera thing? If so you could plausibly get "speech bubbles over
| peoples heads", accurately identifying who said what.
|
| I imagine that could be pretty awesome for deaf people.
| bcx wrote:
| This is a good time to remind everyone that tomorrow, May 16th is
| Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)
| (https://accessibility.day), and that there are over 176 events
| worldwide going on to celebrate the process we are all making at
| improving accessibility in our products -- any plenty of learning
| opportunities for beginners and experts.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-05-15 23:00 UTC)