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thathndude | 2 years ago

This is an interesting take, and a very salacious headline.

I’m a lawyer who represent a number of disabled individuals (including the blind). My clients with vision impairments as all in on Apple products, saying that the accessibility features are head and shoulders above other options.

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hollerith|2 years ago

I switched from MacOS to Linux/Wayland after 10 years on MacOS because it accommodated my vision impairment better.

Because I have cataracts, it helps to make everything on the screen bigger. MacOS can do it, but the result is blurry unless the scaling factor is exactly 1 or exactly 2, and choosing 2 reduces the horizontal resolution too much for some web sites. (My monitor is 1080p, so with a scaling factor of 2, the viewport is only 960 pixels wide.)

In contrast, Linux/Wayland offers scaling factors 1.0, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2.0 and 2.25. (I've been using 1.75 for months.) Windows works similarly to Linux/Wayland (though apps that have not been updated to work with recent versions of the OS end up blurry), so MacOS is definitely a laggard here.

prewett|2 years ago

MacOS 10 used to let you specify scaled resolution in Control Panel >> Displays >> Resolution (scaled). It doesn't give you numbers, though, more like "larger text" and "more space", with "effective resolution" under the image. The effect is a scaling factor, though, you just can't see the actual value. I expect macOS 11+ also continues to do this.

oefrha|2 years ago

> but the result is blurry unless the scaling factor is exactly 1 or exactly 2

I can’t relate. I’ve been using a scaling factor of 1.5 for about a decade now (4K monitor scaled to 2560x1440) and it’s never blurry.

devinprater|2 years ago

Oh we love our iPhones. But then as a computer OS, we get Windows. Some people try to stick with Apple, either because of Logic Pro or the M1 chip, but I'd say a good 85% of blind people that even have a computer in the first place, have Windows.

Dah00n|2 years ago

I have worked with some people in the local blind community in my city here in Denmark. They all use Windows even though I see lots of iPhones.

OliverKennett|2 years ago

It's best to refer to those with disabilities as people rather than their disability, EG, 'blind People' rather than 'The Blind'.

Also, this is talking about voiceover on Mac OS, which is a specific aspect of apple's accessibility solutions. For the most part, IOS on iPhone and iPad OS are better than that of android, though not without their issues. The issue at hand, however, is very real and, for professionals, highly inconvenient.

devinprater|2 years ago

Am I gonna have to put :blind: in my username here too? Anyway I'm blind and I'm a blind person, and a good many blind people like being called blind people, because it's shorter, and doesn't minimize the way blindness effects us. Anyway I was responding to someone that said something like blind people use Apple or some such, my point being that we do love our iPhones, but for computers we use Windows. And just in case you didn't get it, I'm blind too.

RobMurray|2 years ago

This is definitely true in the case of phones, but not for computers. NVDA on Windows is excellent and improving all the time.