Some of you must be saying to yourselves "Oh great another Ranger Apple Bashing Post". But honestly I would rather point you to two articles today that can better some up on how Apple does not consider blind or physical access concerns by their own conscious design.
First up is an article in the Wall Street Journal that discusses how much Steve hates buttons. It explains much about the Apple philosophy and the decision to go touch screen only on the iPhone.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118532502435077009.html
Next, here's an Ars Technica article about a law suit filed today that claims that the Apple Stores are not handicapped accessible. A lot of these issues mentioned are commonly found in many of the Apple Stores I have seen over the years and I believe many of the complaints are really valid.
http://www.arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/08/31/accessibility-suit-filed-against-apple-store
Now here's my mini rant. Apple's popularity in MP3 Players, downloadable content and recently laptop sales takes it beyond the niche company status. And now it's time to be more realistic and more common denominator in your design choice Steve as not everyone shares your ability to enjoy the esthetic over basic functionality. It's a good thing today is Friday because a mini rant is all I have for this subject. But rest assured I'll be back sir.. just sometime after a three day weekend!
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1 comment:
Hey Ranger, I don't know if the same is true for The Station but I catch hell over at BlindConfidential everytime I even suggest that Steve is anything short of a god on Earth or that Apple may not be the ideal solution for us blinks.
For the most part, I've decided not to write or rant about Apple anymore as the effort is like teaching a pig to sing - it frustrates the instructor and annoys the pig.
I'll toss in one jab at Steve here though because I'm a fan of the history of personal computers and a little remembered fact is that, when Steve returned to Apple, one of his first decisions was to kill the speech team as, in his words, it was "superfluous." At that time, I was using a Mac with a little screen reader I wrote for myself but I realized then that Macintosh computers were superfluous in my life.
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