I develop iPad accessibility software for people who have dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, MS, etc. The iPad is a godsend. The large screen couples well with easy-grip shock-resistant spill-proof cases and attachments.
My wishlist for accessibility: louder speaker (as the article mentions), and accessibility settings for a simplified patient-mode UI/UX versus a full-featured caregiver-mode. For example, zero-visibility interfaces (such as swipe up from bottom) are too complex for many of my users to understand and use. I'm hoping that as SwiftUI matures, adding a simpler UI/UX will become easier.
My son is semi-nonverbal and autistic and this is a real pain point for us. We use amazon fire tablets simply because they DO have a kids (simplified) mode. Google has a version for Android on tablets, but they don't support it well. iOS has exactly nothing.
iOS also sucks in that trying to load all his favorite shows for when we are out is near impossible (I have them loaded on an SD card on the fire). Ideal, no, but when he's stressed he throws a blanket over his head and tunes into a show he likes to control what he can. It gets us through the day.
Probably more annoying to do that rigamarole with iTunes than just copying videos onto a microSD card? Plus iPad storage is expensive while a 512GB microSD card will run you $30 these days.
This has always been my argument against people who claim iOS is "easier" to use for the average user. If basic functionality is hidden behind press and hold, multifinger gestures, or swiping hidden items and you're not going to teach a user how to use them, then they may as well not exist.
If you're going to tie fundamental behaviour to unintuitive behaviour, then you have to make sure it's both easy to perform once learnt, and that you actually teach people how to use it.
Yes. The fact that there are _two_ top-down swipes on the home screen that start within half an inch of each other is nutty.
One of those swipes (notifications) fights with every other top-down swipe in an app _and_ the window-dragging swipe in Stage Manager, which only works on the three dots.
I find these frustrating and I have no co-ordination issues.
My father is 84 with cognitive degeneration. He’s used an iPhone for years but is stuck on an old one with the home button purely because we don’t think he’ll transition to swiping up. His short term memory is shot, learning new behaviors is tough, and his fine motor skills aren’t great. Some of the adaptive settings help, but the home button is so easy.
Could someone not build the case you mention (shock, spill proof, easy hold) with a big speaker in it?
> He’s used an iPhone for years but is stuck on an old one with the home button purely because we don’t think he’ll transition to swiping up.
Not sure if you know this, but the latest iPhone SE still uses the iPhone 8 body complete with home button. Depending on which phone he's on, it might be a good idea to upgrade; all of the rumors that I've heard are that Apple will make the next SE on a different body.
I switched my mother, who also has cognitive decline, from the iPhone 7 to the iPhone SE to keep the same shape and the home button. She was never able to master the upward swipe on her new iPad.
Changing to the newer iOS was challenging for her due to the significantly smaller and pushed to the top call answering buttons. Apple does a lot for accessibility, but I really wish they had an “old persons mode”.
I believe that the "top call answering buttons" is the banner for incoming call?. You can change that to be a full-screen one in settings-> phone -> incoming calls. If that's what you mean?
I really dislike the little banner thing and much prefer a full-screen image of whoever's calling.
iOS 17 is supposed to come with a new "Assistive Access" setting[0] which is intended to be an "old person's mode" with limited but pronounced functionality.
In the meantime, you should be able to solve the call banner issue through a relatively hidden setting; Settings > Phone > Incoming Calls > "Full Screen" should put things back to the way they were.
I kept a PC working for my Dad the hard way for years. Luckily when his previous email client became unworkable and confusing we managed to switch him to google mail (which I could more easily help with remotely) and he could be talked through the TeamViewer settings. He carried on using that for several years, delighted to be able to email people, until his interest in using the PC began to drift as he got to 90, mostly I think because it became more difficult for him to read (it is amazing how much the eye's transmission of/sensitivity to light changing over time makes interfaces more difficult or can even make them seem "new", and that is when the interfaces were not changing or doing unpredictable things).
But we never managed to really get him to use a mobile phone. He could do that only fitfully despite some great device designs, and he would reject them quickly. He would forget to charge them, lose the chargers etc., and sometimes would confuse charge and signal strength, or assume he had to switch off the phone to save money.
He would likely know how to use a mobile in an emergency, but of course the day he first wandered off and completely disappeared for hours, he didn't think that was an emergency at all!
As another poster says, I would take this opportunity to upgrade to the last SE with a button while you can. There's a very good chance his muscle-memory skills will translate just fine, but I suspect you are right about swiping up.
FWIW I think swipes starting "beyond the screen", as the Palm guys used to say, is a bad design. I think the number of top-down swipes in iPadOS is confusing and annoying, and I'm not that much more than half the age my dad reached.
I wish you the best in continuing to support this sort of stuff for as long as your father needs it -- keeping someone able to use technology is not just a "nice to have", it's a connection to the modern world that means a lot.
Hopefully we’ll see home buttons on cases. In theory big speakers and a physical button could be put on the bottom of a case to achieve higher levels of accessibility.
My Grandmother was hospitalized many times from 2019 through to 2023 and passed in April, one of the standout things that made this a lot easier to go through was 2021 iPad Mini. During the years she suffered from various magnitudes of physical disability, including being almost completely paralyzed. A lot of this was during covid restrictions so we had to get creative with how we kept in touch.
Here are a few things that the iPad afforded her with no other easy options:
- The tracking webcam let her facetime with us without needing completely steady hands or even the capability to hold the iPad properly.
- The huge amount of accessories that let her use a pen (when capable), drop the iPad without risk of breaking, hold the iPad in various ways let us easily customise the ergonomics for her capabilities at various times.
- Shortcuts and automation let us ensure volume was always maximised during Facetime calls with us, set the volume lower at night so she didn't disurb the ward, have easy to press buttons to call certain family members, and even reset the volume and screen brightness when nurses changed it.
She chose the music to her own funeral, made drawings when she could, played games, and even drafted some pages of a book she left for us after her passing, letting her talk to us one last time. Maybe the author of the link disagrees, but seeing the difference in quality of the calls when she didn't have to worry about getting frustrated about trying to frame her face and everything was night and day.
My Grabdma passed away ten years ago, and aside from wishing she was still with us, I wish iPads had been more prevalent for her last several years. I had her comfortable on an older Windows laptop, but it always intimidated her some. She would move the laptop around when she wanted to sit in the kitchen or her chair, but it was heavy and clunky, and she preferred an external mouse, which was just _one more thing_. I had an iPad when she died, but couldn’t have dropped the money to get one, but dammit I wish I could have. She felt so isolated in her final years (despite living with my parents), and having a 2lb window to the world would have made such a difference. Especially when I see the improvements coming in iOS 17, I think it really would have been a game changer for her.
I really dislike these "X was meant to Y Z. What happened?" stories.
Because who "meant it" to? Did they have any influence? Who stated it as a goal? Do you just mean that a bunch of pundits said it and now you want to be a pundit saying they were wrong?
In the specific case: did Apple ever say they would "revolutionise" accessibility, outright? Or did they just do what they've been doing since the iPhone: slowly, progressively trying to make accessibility a bit better and a bit more normalised?
I'm sure everyone who needs greater accessibility thinks Apple could do more. But I'm pretty sure they think everyone else is even further behind.
(I think Apple could do a couple of things much better -- one of those things would be endorsing or supplying a GPIO/I2C/SPI/CAN etc. bridge device with some official API support)
Yes, the article is probably better summarized as the iPad could have revolutionized accessibility, but it didn’t. A small market still has janky solutions to get by.
Apple, nor any other major company, is likely to sink major resources into helping non-verbal people communicate unless there is a way to use those improvements in a bigger market.
But with that said, the article is well written and worth a read for anyone that comes to the comments before clicking the link.
(Edited)
I’m aware of some interesting things being done with iPads for hospital patients who suddenly find it difficult to communicate – eg in intensive care or post-operatively.
Very domain-specific though, not general purpose. Revolutionary perhaps in care terms but not for accessibility more broadly.
So I think anyone expecting a revolution was setting their expectations up for failure.
Though I think the title and initial premise of the article are selling the actual issue short. There is definitely a lack of financially accessible and intuitive accessibility software for their daughter's needs and others like her.
It’s definitely an area that could see more general solutions appear, and I wish the description of what they need wasn’t buried so far down the page because the actual problem at hand is very interesting.
This is an okay article about the state of the augmentative and alternative communication technology and industry which has been dominated by the iPad since its release. I think it has a bad, misrepresentative, headline, but that's almost de rigeur.
But the article also reveals a very sad story about the mother of a disabled child who longs for an "implanted brain chip" which will enable her daughter to "transmit [her] thoughts wirelessly" and communicate like other children.
> Could a brain chip allow my daughter to verbally express herself with the same minimal effort it takes me to open my mouth and speak? How might she sound, telling me about her day at school? Singing “Happy Birthday” or saying “Mama”?
It's part of a bigger trend of parents of disbled children in the AAC world. The fantasy of AAC is that all the cases are like Helen Keller, or Stephen Hawkings, or Roger Ebert, intelligent motivated individuals with mechanical impediments to traditional means of communicating, but they're not, and technology won't change that.
I’m working on free open source for non speaking people. In the early user testing stage. If anyone is interested in getting involved please reach out.
I haven’t gotten around to documenting it yet. There’s a subdirectory “Morse” with an early version used in user testing, but nothing self explanatory. Plan is a 2-button (or 2 switch) design like Morse code, but without the learning curve and with auto completion.
Update: Dasher is super neat, but definitely for people with fine motor control. I'm working on the opposite, where people have very limited fine motor control.
Both Jef Raskin and Steve Jobs always intended the Mac to be unexpandable (except via serial and parallel ports). Jobs had long wanted devices that the end-user could not upgrade. Well, he got them with the iPhone and iPad.
Jobs never really wanted "general purpose computing". He wanted computing that he controlled from the top down.
It's funny though that the Apple Lisa -- the amazing computer that Jobs worked his ass off to copy parts of and then get killed (after they kicked him off the project) -- was actually far more locked down than the Mac, which Jobs was more involved in. The Mac was more of a general purpose computer, though obviously more locked down than the DOS & CP/M type & home computer type machines it was contemporary with.
And the NeXT, Jobs' next project, was actually quite open. For the time, anyways.
I think he was fairly schizo on this topic. Or just deferred to his engineers where it mattered on certain things.
I don’t think it factored in much to his thinking beyond market acceptance. The mass market mostly didn’t seem to care much about accessibility. Special purpose users do, but that’s a smaller market. I think for Steve Jobs the point was beauty, simplicity, and anti-fragility. A machine with tons of ports, openings, mechanical parts, and janky software is one that breaks easily. Jobs hated things that were janky and that’s consistent throughout his career. In the earlier days, making things work required expansion slots and mechanical parts. When those things ceased to be required, Apple did away with them.
I assume it's a complaint about how iOS devices are computing appliances - they're much less open than the PCs that they've come after.
From my point of view, I'm extremely glad that they're computing appliances and mostly locked down. The younger people here probably have never had the "pleasure" of removing 568 "helpful" toolbars from IE6. For people who just want to use a few applications, a locked down device is simply superior to a more open computer.
Exactly. For the last few years of my Mother’s life she had her iPad with her everywhere. Given her failing eyesight and arthritis it was the only thing she could use and she loved it. She only did Facebook, scrabble and email but that kept her connected. And I was delighted when she ditched the PC so I no longer had to worry about what virus it was going to get next. I agree with others that much more could be done about accessibility, but picking on what for many is the best solution yet is a bit weird. And anyone who has had to be ‘informal IT’ for a non-tech savvy user will know the appeal of an appliance.
Again, these ideals don't have to be mutually exclusive. Apple has made successful and secure platforms before with both an App Store and an external packaging system - they just don't bring that philosophy to the iPhone for profitability reasons.
Once the EU enforces their external app store policy, you won't be forced into using non-Apple software. You can still continue using your iPhone exactly the way you do today, with the option of letting it do more if you ever wanted. It is truly a win-win situation unless your main source of income is Apple stocks.
If you have family members likely to pay for scams, you probably shouldn't give them access to SMS, phone calls or email, for that matter. If they would fall for these threat vectors, then they could already be exploited with a link to Safari or a social engineering scam on speakerphone.
Ah, the old "any imperfect solution is totally useless" position.
I already have to educate and then console when they fall for email or SMS scams. Are you really saying that means I have to accept a new vector from scam stores that impersonate the Apple app store and just charge $100 for "Free" apps?
This regulation will be good for techies AND good for fraudsters. We don't have to pretend there is no downside.
> Are you really saying that means I have to accept a new vector from scam stores that impersonate the Apple app store and just charge $100 for "Free" apps?
Yes? It's rather important that they know how to distinguish the two. If they aren't honing these skills, what's stopping them from logging into a fake iCloud dialogue on someone's random website, or feeding their SSN to the "IRS" over the phone?
It's not like... a naive request. Talk to aging adults about fraud. They will be subjected to it as long as they have some form of individual agency. It sucks, but it's better than telling ourselves fairytales like "it doesn't exist here, though!"
I still don’t see why that means government-mandated removal of a consumer protection is an unmitigated good thing. I guess it’s an idealism I just don’t share.
I’m not opposed to the EU regulation; I am a fan of policy experimentation. But I do expect EU to see a huge increase in scams and fraud, which I guess we should celebrate?
> government-mandated removal of a consumer protection is an unmitigated good thing
DRM-locking your tires to certain manufacturers is a good thing, arguably. The manufacturer has exact measurements and can arguably make safer tires than anyone else.
...that's not an excuse to allow it, though. Yes, by allowing third-party tire manufacturers we sacrifice a bit of safety. If safety is a foremost concern of the OEM, they can work with third-party manufacturers to ensure they keep the users safe too.
> But I do expect EU to see a huge increase in scams and fraud, which I guess we should celebrate?
Again - putting a web browser and cell phone onto an iPod ushered in 2 new avenues for fraud. The number of people who were being scammed on-the-go skyrocketed after the release of the iPhone. That doesn't make it a defacto bad release though, and most people would argue both features were a net-positive. So yeah, people did celebrate that newfound freedom. You don't have to use it - you can be the sort of Luddite who only uses Apple Applications and calls the web a hive of scum and villainy if you want. But other people will use it, and probably enjoy and celebrate the feature. Lord knows Mac and Android users have.
> You can still continue using your iPhone exactly the way you do today, with the option of letting it do more if you ever wanted.
Until publishers decide to launch their own app store and remove games from the app store, forcing me to create accounts and store payment details with them.
Then, poeple like me who explicitly purchased apple devices because this is a feature, are forced to have a "choice" between install the app and the store of their proviser, or no app. That's a lose in my book.
That would be a more fair criticism if Apple charged the game publishers fair fees commensurate with the cost of security audits, bandwidth, availability, and the like. Instead, Apple (and other app stores) tend to demand massive profit sharing.
WTF? Profit sharing? That's just a daft statement. Apple has a surcharge on transactions through the App Store. There's no further requirement from developers. Big devs take issue with Apple's fees because instead of considering the fees the cost of doing business they act as if it's some sort theft.
App Store transaction fees amortize the costs of development/operations of not just the store itself but the OS it all runs on. If you pay 99¢ for an app that covers re-downloads and multiple devices in perpetuity. All running on a global CDN with exceptional uptime.
Apple doesn't charge users a dime for new iOS upgrades over years of the life of the device. Even years old devices get the latest software features of new iOS versions. Supporting old devices has a non-zero development cost.
I mean, Apple also has this software support policy with Macs, which has never had a mandatory payment processing surcharge.
Considering how Apple makes almost 50% hardware margins on every iPhone sold, I think they make plenty enough to continue software support off the initial hardware sale alone.
This is the easiest answer ever: It's not meaningfully "free/open source."
It didn't even have to start out that way; sure, keep that competitive advantage for a few years. But by today, you really should be able to develop an app or whatever for the iPad with ZERO friction and ZERO permission from Apple.
Because Apple's been a bit too effective in dominating the industry, for reasons other than usability or technical superiority; since growing to the top they can leverage inertia and other factors.
I have no idea what you think "ideals" and "being uncouth" have to do with any of this; referring to OSS as e.g. an "ideology" strikes me as a weird misunderstanding of its present role in tech. It's not theory, fam, damn near the entire cloud runs on it today.
But there have been Android tablets and Linux touchscreens. The article already states that these companies make their own hardware prior to the iPad, and the NovaTouch in the article is based around Android devices.
Yet none of them meet the goal here. So clearly the open sourceness of the platforms is not what’s holding things back.
The reason I mention ideals is because you came in to the discussion and effectively said “open source would solve this” but it’s such a non sequitur from the problem at hand, especially given the history of the field.
You’re interjecting your own belief that the lack of ann open source platform is the reason without actually bothering to understand the problem space involved and the players that exist.
Just because the cloud runs on open source doesn’t mean much for this. The cloud also runs on closed source hardware.
I used to root heavily for Nokia but imho the only thing that killed it off was how late they were to the game in pushing it and how they’d already significantly declined as a company by then.
I’m not sure if the author is aware of the Apple Vision announcement, but that will be a giant leap forward for the disabled since it primarily relies on eye tracking for interaction.
To my knowledge, iPad and iOS have been a leap for accessibility. Prior, you’d have to spend thousands on speech setups instead of a few hundred.
Its walled garden also affords accessibility given that there’s much less of a chance for adware and malware to infect people’s devices and confuse them due to the much lower complexity compared to linux, Windows and even Max OS
> The Dwell Control accessibility feature allows people to select and interact with the UI without using their hands.
There’s also Pointer Control in that talk which provides alternatives to eye control.
Note: I obviously haven’t tried this since it’s just Apple’s own videos on it, nor am I someone who would need to. So I can’t speak to the efficacy of those input models. but just relaying the information.
What an odd take that a device constrained to an expensive, closed ecosystem would "revolutionize accessibility," especially when the article appears to base that lofty claim on the sole facts that the iPad had a larger touchscreen with icons.
iOS 17 has a feature called “Personal Voice”, which is something that might end up being very helpful.
> Personal Voice helps people with speech loss create a voice that sounds like them, and use it with Live Speech to communicate in calls and conversations.
as far as i know there have been improvements? not sure what kind of "revolution" the author wanted but having a medium-form-factor portable computer with the power to do stuff like writing recognition (well) and speech synthesis is pretty helpful
then again, the hard truth is there's no percentage in accessibility software. not to say no one can make money doing it, but it's basically a bounded market. the driver of improvements will probably be as boomers start aging more: they'll live longer, but at a lower quality of life, so need stuff to help them get by. and it'll be a big enough market to justify serious attention.
i think this quote from the guy illustrates his misunderstanding pretty well: "It’s hard to think that non-disabled consumers would be expected to accept the same slow pace of incremental improvement for as essential a human function as speech." see of course it's reasonable to expect that tech for normal people improves faster, it's a massively larger market.
"To compensate for the small market size, developers backed into a convoluted business model that required a physician or licensed speech pathologist to formally “prescribe” the device, strategically (and astronomically) priced to subsidize the cost of its development." case in point. stuff made for a small group of people is gonna run pricey, that's to be expected. feels like this guy is mad no one's built a 99 cent app for an ipad so his daughter has that tech easily. i get the frustration, but it's a pretty tiny market so if i'm fred the app builder i'm not about to go out and address that as my first choice.
new tech starts off pareto optimal: putting in 20% of the effort to capture 80% of the market. that's also how we iterate faster. i think it's one of those cases where insisting accessibility software be given equal attention at every stage of the technology life cycle would long-term slow things down for everyone, all in the name of some fuzzy principle of equality of outcome.
My wishlist for accessibility: louder speaker (as the article mentions), and accessibility settings for a simplified patient-mode UI/UX versus a full-featured caregiver-mode. For example, zero-visibility interfaces (such as swipe up from bottom) are too complex for many of my users to understand and use. I'm hoping that as SwiftUI matures, adding a simpler UI/UX will become easier.