What Apple should do regarding motion sickness triggers in OS X and iOS 7
Apple has a problem with animation. In the past, I’ve written about how OS X’s full-screen animations and transitions gave me motion-sickness, leaving dizziness and nausea in their wake. ReSpaceApp/TotalSpaces was a partial solution, but only overrides full-screen slide transitions, and not other OS-level animation. I wrote directly to Apple execs and accessibility@apple.com; having (unsurprisingly) had no response from anyone, I then penned an open letter about motion sickness triggers in OS X Mavericks and iOS 7.
Within the last of those, I was at the time concerned about iOS 7. My fears weren’t unfounded. I’ve now updated my devices and have the same feeling I got on using OS X Lion’s full-screen for the first time. Right now, the iPhone is bearable, but aspects of the iPad are unusable. The app switcher in particular has such aggressive animation and zooming that a single use is enough to trigger dizziness.
I’m not alone. I found vestibular support organisations were hugely concerned about iOS 7. I’ve had many people email and tweet me about these issues, in some cases practically begging for a solution. There isn’t one. I’ve been told about 50 times now to activate ‘Reduce Motion’ in iOS 7, but all that does is remove the home screen parallax—it doesn’t stop the zooming and sliding elsewhere. Obviously, it also doesn’t ‘fix’ OS X for me and others either.
Worse, there’s some major ignorance within the market regarding vestibular conditions. On Friday, I wrote a news piece for Stuff.tv on iOS 7 triggering vertigo and nausea symptoms. This was well received by those suffering, but not by others. I’ve been called a “bullshitter” and a “pansy”; some people helpfully argued that I should “just fuck off and use Android then”, while others said I was “just another idiot finding something else Apple’s done to complain about”.
As someone who’s regularly accused of being an Apple shill, it’s curious I’m now considered the opposite. Also, there appears to be a misunderstanding regarding what people like me actually want. We don’t want to destroy your precious operating systems. We don’t even want to remove those dynamic zooms and swipes you love so much. We merely want a setting that will optionally enable you to do so. That’s it.
I’d like nothing more from Apple than to be able to go to the accessibility settings in OS X Mavericks and iOS 7 and see ‘disable animation effects’. For most people, this option existing won’t affect them. But for many people currently suffering various motion symptoms through standard device use, it will offer a level of delight like no other Apple update. For them, devices will suddenly become truly magical.
Further reading: Why Is Apple Ignoring People with Vision and Balance Problems? (Kirk McElhearn)
I’m not generally prone to these problems, but I found the parallax backgrounds in iOS 7 cause me slight twinges of vertigo if I hold the phone at certain angles when I’m tired. That nauseating swooping in the stomach is pretty unhelpful for the tiny fraction of the time I feel it, but it hasn’t personally driven me to enable “Reduce Motion Effects” yet.
I can only imagine how debilitating it must be for someone seriously affected, and it’s unhelpful that Apple aren’t currently handling the issue you have.
I hope that, given Apple’s generally good accessibility support (especially in iOS), they will patch something in sooner rather than later.
Until that time, I guess you’re stuck. 🙁
I just want to point out that balance issues are not only vestibular. There are neurological causes of dizziness as well; in that case it’s called central vertigo, or central dizziness (as opposed to peripheral vertigo or dizziness, caused by vestibular problems). Also, some animations can be a problem for people with epilepsy disorders; the Time Machine animation, even though it doesn’t flash, could trigger seizures in some people.
But it’s good that you’re highlighting this issue. I’ve found that Apple has gotten into a lot of eye candy in recent years, and not allowed people to turn off these effects that can be very uncomfortable to some people.
I don’t mind the animations myself, in fact I rather like them overall and can’t wait to upgrade my old iPhone 4 so I can experiment all of the effects in full – the iPhone 4 does not support many of iOS 7’s motion effects.
But I absolutely understand what you’re saying. Fast scrolling movements, like the OS X full screen switches or rapid scrolling movements in Safari windows do give her nausea. If there was an option to tone-down or even disable the animations in the new iOS, I’m certain she would use it.
I wholeheartedly agree with your efforts to convince Apple of relenting on this front and urge you not to be intimidated by the comments of uncivilized and insensitive jerks that are always too happy to condemn anyone that those not share their opinions completely.
Completely concur. Happened to open my iPad couple of hours ago and could not stand the twinge of dizziness. On the iPhone its not so bad but with the larger size of iPad its disconcerting.
I’ve enabled both BOLD TEXT and REDUCE MOTION to no relief from near debilitating motion sickness in iOS 7. For me it feels like more than just the animations and zooms in and out, etc. I was getting sick just reading emails and texts or merely glancing at the lock screen to check the time. It’s intant nausea. The only thing I can think of is that it’s something to do with FPS or refresh rate or frequency of the screen.
I thought I’d get used to whatever was making me ill but it did not subsided. I had to go home “sick” from work because of the intense nausea due to using my iphone with iOS 7. I only hope I don’t have to resort to moving to a different brand of phone.
Again, for me it’s not just the zooming that makes me sick (although it does aggravate the nausea even more) but just using the interface as usual i.e. reading texts, e-mail, switching apps, etc. makes me terribly and uncomfortabley ill after a minute or two. Again, it goes beyond just zooming and the parallax in iOS7, it seemed to be something with a buzz or vibration (for lack of a better description) coming off the screen.
My solutiuon: I went to the AT&T store near me and traded in my iOS 7 infected iPhone 5 for a new iPhone 5 with (old) iOS 6 on it. Came home and used my backup to restore the new phone and started using iOS6 again and the nausea went away IMMEDIATELY.
really really bummed because I relish the new design in iOS 7… but at least I’m not sick anymore. 🙁
[…] Craig Grannell: […]
Is it not possible to revert the is of an iOS device?
That really sucks if it doesn’t.
[…] Following my previous work on iOS 7 and balance/motion issues, I was asked to write about the subject for The Guardian. My article Why iOS 7 is making some users sick talks to developers (one of whom suffers from motion sickness), vestibular disorder experts, and John Golding, professor of applied psychology at the University of Westminster. The article provides, I believe, a succinct and thorough overview of the problem and what Apple can do to fix it, and yet still there are doubters and naysayers. Therefore, I’d like to address a few comments I’ve been repeatedly receiving or seeing over the past week: […]