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Apple today is marking Global Accessibility Awareness Day with several new features across its sites and services to promote inclusion and access to technology for anyone with a disability.

accessibility_day_2020.jpg

On the front page of Apple.com, there's a new section today with the tagline "Works the way you do" that links to the company's existing Accessibility page, which highlights a number of personal stories as well as features of Apple's products targeted at accessibility.

accessibility_day_2020_app_store.jpg

Over on the App Store, the Today section features several cards with the theme of "Designed for Accessibility." The cards highlight stories about accessibility in apps including handcycling tracking in Strava, text-to-speech app Voice Dream Reader, a color-blind mode in Tint, hearing loss assistant SonicCloud, and Toca Life World's inclusive character customization options for kids.

accessibility_day_2020_gus.jpg

Finally, with most of Apple's retail stores still closed, the company is continuing to focus on moving its Today at Apple sessions online with its series of Today at Apple at Home videos, and a new session on transitions and loops in the Clips app by Gus from Apple Carnegie Library is done entirely in American Sign Language. Audio narration and subtitles are also included.



Article Link: Apple Highlights Global Accessibility Awareness Day With App Store Features and New Today at Apple Video
 
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nwcs

macrumors 68030
Sep 21, 2009
2,722
5,262
Tennessee
I’m not a fan of everything Apple does but I have always applauded the work they do for the disabled among us. They have gone far further than any other mainstream business in making their products accessible. So hat’s off to them.
 

VictorTango777

macrumors 6502a
Oct 28, 2017
890
1,626
It appears that Apple is trying to score political points by moving settings from application preferences and burying them in Accessibility on both iOS and MacOS, in order to inflate the number of settings in Accessibility. Apple wants to say "Look at us, we have this Accessibility thing with all these settings" when many of those settings should be located in more appropriate places. Examples:

On a Mac laptop, you go to System Preferences > Mouse and you can change scrolling speed. If you go to System Preferences > Trackpad, there is no scrolling speed. Instead, it is buried somewhere in Accessibility preferences.

In System Preferences > Mouse, there is no option to adjust pointer size. Instead, that setting is buried somewhere in Accessibility preferences.

To turn off spring loaded folders in the Finder, you don't go to Finder Preferences. Instead, that setting is buried somewhere in Accessibility preferences.

On iPhone and iPad if you go to Settings >Display & Brightness, there is no setting to control auto brightness. Instead, you have to go to Accessibility.

On iPhones that have Touch ID, you can set it to wake and unlock the phone by pressing the home button once and leaving your finger on the button, instead of having to first press and release home button and then put your finger on the Touch ID again. But instead of having this option in Settings > Touch ID, it is buried in Accessibility.

Moving settings from the application and burying them in Accessibility is not helpful at all. It just causes more irritation because people now have to look in two places to find things: the application preferences and Accessibility. The Accessibility preferences have become as convoluted as iTunes and this helps no one.
 
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