#technology #accessibility #iOS #Apple #Windows I've come to realize something about my attitude toward technology. Yes, I enjoy it, and am grateful for accessible tech every day. I enjoy learning new skills also. However, I've discovered this is within limited parameters. Now that I'm using my phone for all tech tasks, I'm finding I want simple, uncomplicated interaction. This is why I've become so frustrated with Windows. It seems to me that Microsoft, with every version of Windows, makes interaction, from the setup experience, to usage, to updates, less streamlined and more involved, even with Narrator. All these choices concerning privacy settings and reporting activity to Microsoft, it seems to me, are not configured, by default, to benefit the user. On the contrary, default settings, in general, are set to benefit Microsoft, and give Microsoft as much control as possible. So the user has to adjust these privacy and reporting options to benefit themselves, and to do this requires time and some level of skill, on the part of the user, that often goes far beyond the skills a beginning tech user may have. Most users, I think, believe these settings are optimally configured with the users best interests in mind, and in my experience, this is not at all the case.
Apple, in iOS, also utilizes this mindset, to a certain extent. But it is far easier to adjust these settings. Apple, even during the setup process, makes the user aware of them by asking the user to choose certain privacy and reporting options. This is why I do not recommend a service provider such as AT&T or Verizon or even the Apple store, setup someone's device for them.
I had AT&T configure my first iPhone, only to discover that location services and tracking were turned on. I only later discovered this because I have a propensity to go through menus in detail. Yes, for certain apps, location services has to be turned on in order for some apps to function properly, but, in general, it only has to be turned on for specific apps, such as weather and maps, if a user is going to utilize GPS. Also, the default is to use your actual location, not your general location, which I believe is more intrusive than necessary. The average user, especially one new to technology, likely has no idea of these settings. I know I didn't.
I'm finding my iPhone and iOS experience so freeing from a lot of this constant intrusiveness. This is why I say, in general, once an iOS device is configured, it just works.
I am keeping apps that have a superior accessibility experience over the website but recently, I Am honestly starting to just browse/use mobile websites rather than using the apps. For me, I’m starting to download apps only if they have an interactive component, like game or music or audio. Otherwise, I really don’t need to download an app to get an experience that could be achieved on a mobile website. #WebDev #Apple #Android
Of course Apple is going to support RCS, they literally have to as it’s the replacement for SMS and afaik required for 5G certification. They dragged their feet to try and pretend they weren’t interested, and the people who suffered most were their own customers who got a crap experience.
This is how Apple weaponizes their own users.
But hey, I guess it is one less barrier for me ever considering using an iPhone? 🤷‍♂️ Now let’s do sideloading.
Sigh, another glaring #macOS Sonoma 14.1 bug, this time affecting #Catalyst apps.
1. Click on a text field in a Catalyst app (The message composition field in the Messages app does nicely). 2. Reveal the Character Viewer using the Globe key, or by selecting Edit/Emoji & Symbols 3. Search for Emoji (e.g. type “money” in the search field) 4. Double-click the selected emoji
Note that *two* instances of the emoji is inserted. Now double click an emoji in Character Viewer again. Note that *one* instance is inserted, which is the correct behavior.
This post was originally published in my Production Diary on Patreon.com/SomeGadgetGuy. Many thanks to the Patrons supporting production on this blog! It’s finally happened. My wife has been …
This post was originally published in my Production Diary on Patreon.com/SomeGadgetGuy. Many thanks to the Patrons supporting production on this blog! It’s finally happened. My wife has been …
Is anyone else on #MacOS #Sonoma having a problem with #VoiceOver where nothing is announced when they arrow through a lot of text fields? Please don't say I'm the only one. I mean it's not even consistent; it'll work completely fine in web apps, but won't in others like Notes, Pages, or Mona. Shocking #a11y and #ScreenReader #Bug here from #Apple. Really quite disappointed with the Sonoma release. Glad that Apple are pausing feature updates to work on #Bugfixes.
After getting fed up with the general neglect of MacOS accessibility from Apple, and having wanted to work on something meaningful for quite some time, I decided to attempt something that for some reason nobody seems to have tried to do before: write…
Back tap uses the accelerometer to detect the taps. Which means back tap works anywhere on the back. And the way it works makes it so side and front taps don’t trigger it (accelerometer can detect direction of taps).
So yeah, apple logo isn’t a button, sensor, or anything. It’s just an apple logo.
So, there’s an issue in MacOS 14.2 beta 2. If you have Typing Echo set to Nothing, you won’t hear characters or words you arrow through. Setting it to Characters, Words, or both works around this issue.
Apple letos po letech tvrde blokady zavedl standardni system web notifikaci v PWA. Teoreticky.
Naimplementuju service-worker. API Push Notifickaci. Server. Vyzkousim to v Chromu (Safari neumoznuje localhost testy). Vsecko funguje. Zkousim to jeste lokalne ve standlone appce v Android emulatoru. Vsecko funguje.
Pushnu. A na iPhone nic. Hrabu se kodem. Zkousim to vicekrat. A nic.
Propojim iPhone s Macem. Otevru service-worker konzoli v Safari. A najednou to FUNGUJE! 🤬
#Apple, you screwed the pooch in this instance not just slightly, but very, very damn badly indeed. What kind of quality control systems *aren't* in-place to allow a build of #Logic (specifically Logic 10.8) to go out of the door where something as simple as recording MIDI notes duplicates every single one of them? A new shiny release and this is how you fail? Glad I don't have clients in today or I'd be losing business because of you. Livid does not even begin to cover how I feel today. Not a damn bit of it.
I'm trying to help developer improving their app in iOS and I was wondering if anyone here would happen to know if there's any doc on how to make VO speak in real time what happens in an app? Currently when the state changes it stay silent, meaning you have to scroll about to see if anything has changed.
This app is an irc client, and it needs to read you incoming and outgoing messages as they come in, or as you send them.
So in iOS 17.1 and such, does anyone else find that Braille Screen Input is a ton better? I mean to be fair I'm on 17.2 beta, but even before that it has gotten a lot better even on this tiny SE 2020.
I'm usually against discussing rumors this far in advance. This is interesting though.
#Apple plans several new #health features for 2024's Apple Watch, like an elevated blood pressure sensor, and a paid health service, possibly using #AI
Apple Inc. is planning several new health-related features for next year’s Apple Watch and a paid health service, people familiar with their development said.
Just FYI, a lot of #ActuallyBlind people don't like the TouchBar on MacBooks. I know a few people that do, but a lot of important VoiceOver commands use the function keys. So without them, we have to hold down the FN key and press the number for the function key. It's really awkward and really frustrating.
On the other hand, it's awkward to type Control + Option + F2 even on a MacBook *with* function keys on a MacBook keyboard. I honestly think that Apple needs to give us more options for these keyboards. Want a TouchBar? Fine. Want a full-sized keyboard on your 16-inch MacBook, with all modifiers on both sides of the keyboard? Great! Want a TouchBar *and* function keys? maybe a bit more expensive, but that's fine too. It doesn't *have* to be one or the other. The only reason it is is because of Apple. And before some reply guys come up here with pre-cum on their Apple boner, saying that that'd cost Apple way too much money to handle all those permutations, nah. they can handle it. If they can handle all their iPhones, they can handle this.
#apple watch important voiceover issue. Hi everyone a very important Apple Watch voiceover issue that I wish to report to the group. At the moment if you attempt to power your watch off running watch OS 10.1 there is a known issue for voice over users. When you hold the side button down and then tap the power button, voice over does not get focus on the power button and focus Mayland on the emergency call button instead. This is a known issue and is being investigated by the Apple engineering group. For the time being, you can either hold down the two side buttons for 10 seconds to restart the watch or turn VoiceOver off then on and then the power down procedure will work. I found out the hard way by calling emergency services and I was not wanting to do this. I hope this is helpful to all of you out there.
Honestly, I'm so used to understanding tech things quickly. But moving my whole workflow over to the Mac is going to take a lot of work. Getting into the routine of either using Voice Dream Reader to read books, or Thorium I suppose, or maybe pulling out Emacs and such. The Books app is okay for a few pages of a book, but then it stops reading and I have to mess with it to get it to start reading through pages again. I'm still not sure if I even *want* to switch. I mean, this Windows laptop has 32-GB RAM, 512 GB NVME storage, a good AMD 550 CPU, I mean it's a good machine. But then I have an iPhone and having widgets from the iPhone on the Mac is kinda cool, and all the cool people use Macs... Meh, it's always a journey with me. And the MacBook is an Intel model, 8 GB RAM, all that. Like it feels a lot more like something to keep up with new MacOS/VoiceOver stuff more than a thing that can keep up with my work and speed. But who knows.
So, Mac users. What apps for Mac keep you on Mac, or make you miss it when you're on other platforms? Can be accessibility-related or not. And they should work on Intel Macs too. I know, but I've seen like one or two that only work on M-series Macs.
I swear, #buggy, buggy #Apple #iOS releases! And it doesn’t seem that the #public #betas they’re offering now have made much difference. thing is, Apple is, by far, the most #accessible option I as a #blind person have right now in terms of cell phones, so, I’m kinda stuck with it. #a11y
> iOS 17.1 is coming this week to fix everything wrong with your iPhone, MacWorld
I hate it so, so much. Will it fix the problem where non-HID Braille displays don't work with VoiceOver? Will it fix that the Eloquence voice is quiet as crap? Will it fix the issue where sometimes even doing a *double tap* doesn't register correctly, leading students and people new to VoiceOver thinking *they're* the problem? Will it freaking fix *any* VoiceOver bugs? Oh fuck no, cause we blind people aren't a part of *everyone*, so our bugs aren't a part of *everything* that's wrong with "your" iPhone. Fuck you too MacWorld, fuck you too. I hate this type of "we know everyone's issues and we'll just downplay them all at once" kind of reporting. I hate this kind of normal-washing of everything. Fuck that shit with the pointiest thing available. Ugh!
It's good that we now have live speech. Really great. It will definitely help me with my dysphoria, I think. I consider myself as unable to function and speak unless it is absolutely required, offline or online, despite having no disability on that front -- one might argue gender dysphoria is in itself a disability, and I entirely agree.
But there's a few things I'd really like apple to consider about it. I just haven't a clue where to report that, if anywhere: - It'd be great to be able to reorganize expressions. Currently, they all show up in the order they were added in. - It'd also be great to have per-language expressions that would be showing up only if the appropriate keyboard is active.
It makes it quite a mess when you have to add expressions for more than one language and then have to move to the one you want to use while having different mix of languages showing up.
So, I'm not even sure if this can be done on Android, but on iOS, when a notification pops up on the top of the screen, I can tap it and it reads it to me. That's simple, and I think Android does that too. I can swipe up and double tap to dismiss it. Yeah, simple. But something I'm just now starting to appreciate is quick actions, even when the notification pops up! I swipe down to "more", double tap, and there they are. I don't have to go to the notification center or anything.
Meanwhile on Android, I feel like I have to go to the notification shade for all that.
Yet another reason not to update your iOS and Watch OS yet. Early releases always seem to be full of bugs, and this one sounds horrible. At this rate, I’ll be waiting for iOS 17.2. #Apple #iPhone PSA: Bug caused Apple Watch running watchOS 10.1 beta to drain iPhone battery https://9to5mac.com/2023/10/10/bug-watchos-10-1-beta-drain-iphone-battery/
You know, I've just about decided. My next phone will most likely be the iPhone 15. Not the Pixel 8. iOS is just so far ahead right now, to me (this is a factual oppinion), that I feel like the iPhone 15 will pay off just a tad bit more than waiting 7 years for Google to reach VoiceOver-level capabilities, if they can even focus for that long lol. Besides, maybe I can have the side button go to next track when pressed, and then go to previous track when double pressed, or pressed and held. That'd solve literally one of the best things about my Samsung right now. And honestly I could probably do that with VoiceOver by setting up a shortcut to just hit next track or something and binding that to a VO command. I should try that.
There is a blog post on @AppleVis that highlights a long-standing bug that occurs in the interaction between Safari's WebKit engine, and VoiceOver, the screen reader on all Apple platforms. In this case, it is specific to MacOS. I have seen this bug on and off myself since 2007 in the OS X Leopard days. #Apple #Accessibility #VoiceOver #Safari #WebKit
As many of you will know from personal experience, there is a longstanding issue with VoiceOver on Mac where Safari will frequently become unresponsive with VoiceOver repeatedly announcing the message “Safari not responding.
Tried to get this post by AppleVis some traction on Hacker News, and I *am* impressed at the 49 upvotes or so, but damn some of the comments. You just *know* the fossbro has never, ever met a blind computer user before. Like haha if Linux was anywhere near as good as even a Mac accessibility-wise, most blind people would be happily, and I mean happily, using that instead of Windows.
been debating this with some friends who like debating this sort of thing, and wondered what the general opinion of fedi is. What will #apple do for the next #iPhoneSE?
I'm volunteering at my daughter's elementary school by teaching a "coding club" for 5th graders during their lunch and afternoon recess.
It mostly went great, except I left nearly in tears...
One of the kiddos that joined is blind, and I discovered that the coding programs for kids don't appear to be accessible *at all*.
First we tried Swift Playgrounds, but that didn't seem to work with VoiceOver. Then, he said that he's liked ScratchJr. in the past, and he got frustrated with that because he couldn't get his cat to move.
I'm kinda at a loss for how to help him. He left crying because he thinks that he can't get it, but I'm sure he can. Does anyone have any advice?
