Apple isn't serious about inclusive design in hardware. Their software UX leads are some of the most brilliant figures in the fight for accessible computing, but their hardware is almost universally bad for accessibility. For people with sufficiently-advanced dyskinesia, even the most generous software accessibility settings aren't super helpful. It took them thirteen major releases of their operating system to offer pointer events using external hardware, broken pointer events, which was more or less the only way in which people with motor disabilities could make the system usable at all.
If Apple is an example of disabled people in an organization being serious about inclusive design in a way that is "easy," then that reflects incredibly poorly on the disabled engineers and designers working at Apple and the possibilities of inclusive design as a liberating force.
People at Microsoft worked hard on the Adaptive Controller. It was hard, and it took years. It is an incredible feat of empathy in engineering.
i must confess i did not have a good definition of dyskinesia in my mind but reading briefly i absolutely can get why apple hardware would be awful with dyskinesia; as much as i love the apple trackpads i still sometimes get cursor jumps or accidental clicks with the touch to click option enabled; im sure there are other elements that introduce frustration also but that one i can relate to fast.
i have heard high praise for apple with their accessibility settings and my colleagues and friend who use these options seem to like them, so there’s something. really hope that the hardware focus continues to get traction as just “something that should be done” not as a new revenue stream. i thjnk proper accessibility and customization serves everyone, not just those with disabilities [0]. technology should be adaptable to any given user, not the other way around.
0 - i’m actually not sure if this is right wording but my brain struggles to know the preferred term. i am happy to have a better way to describe people with disabilities
'Disabled', in particular, has two differing politically charged usages and definitions. That is, whether one is disabled by their impairments or by society. It surprises most people that the latter is "more correct", being the Unesco[0] definition. It's also the more empathetic, in my opinion.
There are many opinions about this, and there is no collective preferred term.
Thank you this was a nice read and it's useful to understand that it's a very personal topic.
Another book I have read explained the "person first" approach to describing disabilities, and it makes sense as I can see how it's very much so on dependent on the individual preferences.
Apple isn't serious about inclusive design in hardware. Their software UX leads are some of the most brilliant figures in the fight for accessible computing, but their hardware is almost universally bad for accessibility. For people with sufficiently-advanced dyskinesia, even the most generous software accessibility settings aren't super helpful. It took them thirteen major releases of their operating system to offer pointer events using external hardware, broken pointer events, which was more or less the only way in which people with motor disabilities could make the system usable at all.
If Apple is an example of disabled people in an organization being serious about inclusive design in a way that is "easy," then that reflects incredibly poorly on the disabled engineers and designers working at Apple and the possibilities of inclusive design as a liberating force.
People at Microsoft worked hard on the Adaptive Controller. It was hard, and it took years. It is an incredible feat of empathy in engineering.