9. It's almost impossible to get the right letter without being able to see the screen. Because you have to place your finger, listen for the right letter, then "lift it off" and place it again. Trying to slide your finger inevitably results in it thinking you're "holding" the wrong character and "pressing" the one next to it.... which then causes the phone to input that first character. Of course, you don't "know" whether it just inputted the wrong character, or whether it just announced that you'd re-selected the same wrong character, because there's absolutely no difference in the audio cues.
Considering that the guy goes on to slam everything Apple in the comments (including saying you have to buy a peripheral to use more than one mouse button), I'm taking this whole thing with a grain of salt.
“(including saying you have to buy a peripheral to use more than one mouse button)”
Seriously? People still say this? This hasn’t been true since Apple standardized on the Mighty Mouse (horrible mouse that it was). That was a long time ago (in internet time, anyway), and now the Mighty Mouse is dead.
Apple is the only company I know of even trying to make an accessible modern SmartPhone. It's been less than 6 months since accessibility features were introduced. I think patience is reasonable in this case. Apple is almost certainly developing these accessibility features at a financial loss.
You can't even put in a fucking server name without giving it an email address, a password, and letting it fly off to the internet and bang on things it thinks* might be your mail server. Once you've got that, you can put in an incoming server and username, and an outgoing server, and then you wait while it fails to connect, automatically because it hasn't got the right port. And then you have to go back in to set your outgoing server's authentication. It takes a 3-minute process (laboriously hunt-and-peck your name, email address, password, and mail server settings) into a 15-minute process as it repeatedly "helpfully" tries things that you know are going to fail, but can't interrupt and can't cancel. So you wait for several minutes before it realises you really do need to use an alternate port and enable SSL.*
While this instance may be specific to the iPhone with screen reader and setting up wireless, this kind of make-it-easy-by-removing-options-and-attempt-to-probe-for-everything is especially frustrating when you know what the options are but the device or UI wants to do something itself in the name of helping you. I find these kinds of things especially frustrating because it's often difficult to verify the settings after it's been automatically set up.
No, you need to leave the Mail app, then find Settings, scroll down (see 2), select mail and other things, select mail, select this account, select this account, find the password field (without it reading the field names, I remind you), and put in the password, then save the settings and restart the mail app.
Finally, an example of "having all the settings in one place", but divorced from the place the setting is used is a bad idea. I never really understood the mindset that this is supposed to be easier. I know that the app needs the settings, I can find the app no problem, but its settings are some where else, with navigation totally separate from the app. I guess it makes accessing the settings consistent across apps, but this is a weird thing to optimize since you should rarely be messing with app specific settings, and when you do, you're already in the app.
Trying to find the source of this: someone recently observed (maybe here on HN?) that a number of communications methods we take for granted in our everyday lives started as accessibility options. The example that struck me was text messaging, which allegedly began as a way for deaf people to use cell phones. Anyone know the reference?
much. I'm sure he has problems, but he seems also to not suggest what he believes to be the right way to do a couple of things.
also, he might be a bit misinformed. sure, itunes makes you install apple software update, but safari and bonjour and all that? I don't think so. power user customization that Linux, Windows users expect? I think he hasn't discovered the terminal.
and the "1 button unless you buy a peripheral" er, no. two finger tap on the mousepad, better than sliced bread.
That's unfortunate, but I don't think the appeals of the iPhone are really that applicable to blind persons for reasons like this. A touch interface isn't going to work very well without visual feedback, even if the mentioned issues are fixed; it would be better to search for a device more well-suited.
The accessibility features on the iPhone are constantly improving with each update to the iPhone OS and are quite impressive for what is an all-touch interface. While there are bugs and inaccessible applications, I have talked to and worked with visually impaired folks that love the iPhone as an alternative accessible phone to whatever else they were using before it. Obviously they can't just go and play whatever game or use any app they want, but for many apps the general interface is predictable and fairly simple to navigate and discover.
For the author of the above-linked article to claim that Apple's purposefully making voiceover suck to annoy the blind is a bit rich and ill-informed, given Apple's accessibility team want to help, are very helpful if you ever email them about issues (accessibility@apple.com), and could probably address most of those issues as best they can if they were informed of them. A true "fuck you" to the blind would be to not have included voiceover on the iPhone 3GS in the first place.
Android is well positioned to dominate in this niche. I can imagine an Android distro optimized for accessibility. Someone should make it their business to provide smartphone hardware and software for the blind.
According to wikipedia there are an estimated 40 million blind people in the entire world. If we assume a global population of 6 billion, that's 0.007% of people. And a large portion of those people live in a state of poverty. So, not a very big market. Doesn't seem worthwhile unless you can get governments or private charities to give you money to develop it.
A key point buried here: the aging population cannot use iPhones because the fonts are too small. Give an iPhone to someone older who needs reading glasses, as I have (with my parents, in-laws). I find they understand the natural affordances of the iPhone interface pretty quickly, which is a testament to the good job Apple did there, but they often just cannot read the screen.
That's a separate problem from adding accessibility for blind people. The obvious ways to make touchscreen phones easier for old people are larger buttons and text, and exaggerated visual cues, which help blind people not at all.
What happens is that there are companies that will work on products like that, and then they will go on to sell said product for hundreds if not thousands of dollars (if not more) to justify the cost of designing and producing the product.
On the other hand, voiceover comes with all iPhone 3GSes and voiceover on Mac OS X is free and comes built into the OS (even during OS installs!). I guess that's Apple's way of telling blind people that Apple doesn't care about them and they should go buy other products..
I think you mean 0.7% of people, which is not necessarily a small market. Developing a sophisticated consumer electronics product like the iphone may be expensive, but developing a few software apps for it isn't necessarily, especially if you can dominate the market for the accessible phone.
That said, I would agree that there are more compelling markets out there. I wouldn't be surprised if most accessibility developers have altruistic motives.
9. It's almost impossible to get the right letter without being able to see the screen. Because you have to place your finger, listen for the right letter, then "lift it off" and place it again. Trying to slide your finger inevitably results in it thinking you're "holding" the wrong character and "pressing" the one next to it.... which then causes the phone to input that first character. Of course, you don't "know" whether it just inputted the wrong character, or whether it just announced that you'd re-selected the same wrong character, because there's absolutely no difference in the audio cues.
Is there a market for making some sort of Braille screen overlay for the iphone, similar to something like http://appadvice.com/appnn/2009/11/your-iphone-can-also-feat... ??