iOS Wish List: Accessibility

More and more I see both older folks and little kids playing with iPads and even iPhones. And it's got me thinking about the Accessibility features Apple put into the software and a couple of things that could be tweaked to make them a bit more useful.

That Triple Click

This one seems to be a bit of a cock up really. It is used for turning on an off Guided Access if you turn that mode on. But it can also be turned on to work for such things like toggling off the Assistive
Touch button. But to me that seems a tad dumb. If you have Assistive Touch on it's generally because the person isn't so awesome with clicking that button. That's why they need the assistance. The last thing, I would think, you'd want is for one of them to accidentally turn it off. And you can also use it to turn on or off VoiceOver, Zoom etc. You can even turn all 5 on and then you have to tap to tell it which one you want. Just seems to me like there is a better way of handling that whole thing.

Guided Access

As I mentioned yesterday, I'd love to see a Restricted Mode so that parents aren't having to hand recreate Restrictions each and every time but can save them. This removes the argument that it's too time consuming so bother with when Junior is screaming to play a game. I'd like to see this kind of saving in Guided Access as well. Perhaps even, as with Restrictions, a way to create 2-3 different modes perhaps for different kids or games.

Fonts

Large Text only applies to Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Messages and Notes which is a good start, but what about Safari, Settings etc. Sure it's tricky with the actual webpages but certainly there's the toolbar. Even if it doesn't go all the way to the huge 56pt fonts if someone picks something up into that level then they must have issues with smaller text so why not do them the courtesy of making those bookmark labels a bit bigger even if they top off at like 40pt.

Keyboards and Entry Points

When using things like larger text, the actual spots for typing in stuff don't get bigger. At least not always. For example, if I turn on 40pt text when I'm in Messages, the bubble gets big enough to accomodate the bigger text size. But in Contacts, the list gets bigger but the data page didn't nor did the edit page. They stayed the normal size.

Nor does the keyboard get bigger. It would be a good option perhaps to allow folks to choose a bigger keyboard even if means going to something akin to the 3 letters on a key style used for years with dumb  phones.

Home Screen Icons

How about a way to zoom the icons to make them bigger. Sure on a phone it means few icons on the screen, perhaps even having to dump the dock, but certainly on an iPad there is a ton of blank space for such an increase to be done without too much shifting things around.

iCloud syncing

This one surprises me that it's not already there. Why don't I have the option to sync my settings across iCloud if I wish.