Why not make the iPhone more Accessible?
Peter Abrams over at Bloor Research has written a good article about the accessibility - and lack thereof - of the iPhone to various groups of users:
The iPhone is the must-have technology of the moment—unless you are unable to use it. A user must be able:
- To see fairly well, not 20-20 vision but something close. If the user is blind they cannot see the controls on the screen and therefore cannot control the device. If the user has a vision impairment the controls may not be sufficiently clear and again the device is of no use.
- Hold the device steady with one hand whilst controlling it with the fingertips of the other. Whilst ruling out its use by a tetraplegic user it also appears to rule out ladies with long nails (the nails get in the way of the fingertips and trying to control the device with the pads of fingers or nails does not seem to work well if at all).
The article refers to some third-party accessories that I’m not aware of - straps/stands/grips that remove the need for a second hand to hold the device, and pointers that don’t require skin contact to work.
As usual when there’s an Apple-related article in a general publication, at least one person has turned up in the comments and wrongly claimed that iTunes is inaccessible - it’s been accessible for a long time now.
Website: Why not make the iPhone more Accessible?
- Ricky Buchanan, ATMac
ITunes is indeed accessible. However, you hsould take a less narrow view and acknowledge that ITunes on the Windows environment can hardly be called accessible. Let’s not nitpick hwen there are other things to worry about. I can understand if you want to ignore the Windows crowd if they were few and far between. But, by all accounts, Windows ITunes users are in the majority for now. It wil change when it changes but until then …
Pratik Patels last blog post..ppatel: Trying @RTM app for GMail.
@Pratik: I honestly have no idea about the accessibility or not of iTunes under Windows. I don’t know how accessibility for screen readers works on Windows, whether it’s the responsibility of Microsoft or the app writer or the screenreader writer - all three seem to be involved. I agree that iTunes being accessible to screenreader users under Windows is an important thing in general, but it’s not something I know anything about. The person who commented on the other blog was talking about iTunes under Mac OS X - he specifically said so, and has again in his reply to me.
Do you know much about iTunes and Safari and other Apple products under Windows and their accessibility or lack thereof? Would you be willing to write a blog article on the topic? It’s something we haven’t covered here and I agree with you that it’s something that’s important. I’d love to learn about it too.
- Ricky