Hi, I have albinism, and it sucks, .. I get daily headaches, I have nystagmus, small fonts are hard to read, etc. And that's why I love osx/macOS, because they come with amazingly displayed fonts in various resolutions that are easy on the eyes, with great features to increase them while not becoming blurry. You can on the retina iMac even change to higher and lower resolutions and it's as if it's the native resolution.
And in every previous version of macOS the Zoom accessibility feature had Rapid Zoom, and while Zoom is still in High Sierra, the rapid zoom has been removed. Why? No idea, .. i have been in talks with Apple for a few days now, engineers (according to them) are looking into it but so far they have a hard time even understanding that I am talking about high sierra not having the thing in the red as shown above.. they keep thinking that i can't turn on/off the zoom, or that it doesn't zoom in.. sigh.
It DOES work, it DOES zoom in, but the minimum and maximum levels you can set as a preference has been removed, and THAT is the problem, it's the most important feature of the zoom ..
And this isn't an opinion, of that it should or shouldn't be there, we're not talking about a font being shown differently or a color we don't agree on.. this is accessibility. To give a stupid example: You could always push a wheelchair, but now they decided to remove those handles, so you can't get support pushing it .. and they keep asking: but you can still sit in the chair, right?..
Before, you could set levels. So when you cmd/option/+ to zoom in, you would jump right to that level, be it 7 or 20.. whatever the number is.
Now, in high sierra, that's removed, you have to press cmd/option+ as many time as your required zoom in level is. And yep, it's not a matter of 'i want level 7 or 8', it's a 'i need it, .. to literally see'.
So imagine you have to go to level 12 each time just because that's the right one for your eyes, you press cmd/opt/+ ONCE, and you're there.. and in High Sierra, you have to do: cmd/opt/+, cmd/opt/+, cmd/opt/+, cmd/opt/+, cmd/opt/+, cmd/opt/+, cmd/opt/+, cmd/opt/+, cmd/opt/+, cmd/opt/+, cmd/opt/+, cmd/opt/+ ...
And before, you could press the - and it would zoom out all the way, now it's forced to 1x steps as well, so you have to basically do it another 12 times.
This slows down usability a lot, this makes you change feeling a bit more like a normal person using the computer to constantly getting reminded that you are not, and you have to take another break just to zoom in and out, .. wasting time, interrupting workflow, building up irritation.
I asked them a few things: is this the case, is it really removed, maybe it's hidden somewhere else, or i can still enable it with a terminal command. their response is: can you take another screenshot for me? .. again, not realising it's literally not there, i mean, there are only so many ways i can explain to their tech and support what has been removed. Another question is: if it is removed, will it be back, is this a bug, oversight? And maybe.. why has it been removed, because for the love of steve jobs i can't even imagine one single reason why you would add discomfort to those who need this feature every 5 minutes, every time they use the system. No reply either, they're still trying to understand that the rapid zoom is what i am talking about.
They are relaying again to the engineers what the problem is, hopefully they figure it out this time, .. and call me back tomorrow, .. this guy tonight told me he'd schedule a call for tomorrow, but the case number shows no info, no call ~ it appears it's simply been closed. So we will see.
If they are so oblivion about this feature, then i dont understand they sat down and discussed the benefits of removing it
It's frustrating, it's literally affecting how i use my system daily. And sure, i can get over myself and get used to this compromise and just deal with pressing the + 7x and - 7x multiple times every 5 minutes instead of just once. But imagine someone with worse eyes than me that also invested loads of money into a machine that can do this stuff or them, only to find out the update removed it.. who might need to zoom in 25 times.. that's 50x key presses every time they need to focus on something important on the screen.
I do not understand how i had to spend nearly an hour at midnight talking to someone from the disability department (who was very nice btw) to try and explain that it wasn't there. Eventually it seems she got it, and said: huh, i didn't even know it was removed..
Because of my visual disability it took me two years to save up for a modern system that i use to socialize, watch my media on in a way i have control over it, do my hobbies in resolutions that i can work with, etc. And I am broke now after spending the 3600 euro (4250 dollar) and was happy i had a system that would get me another 10 years of awesome apple experience.. only to find out the day i upgrade to high sierra that most important feature for me (and i can only imagine any visually impaired person that uses the zoom more than 2 levels) kinda turned this system into a regret.. and the argument "why not stay on sierra" is kinda stupid, i didn't spend 3600 euro to get a new tech machine to keep it on sierra the next eight to ten years.
end of rant, .. i mean, sharing of personal frustration with high sierra, which other 99% is really awesome. But while i can change the font or a color .. i can't change removed features or my eyes.
