In 2012, I fell ill. Abrupt dizziness. I felt like I’d been drinking heavily, and had no idea what was going on.

Being a logical type, I looked at changes in my life around that time. It took a full day before I realised the only major change had been updating my Mac to OS X Lion. The full-screen animations were making me sick. Fortunately, I could avoid the worst of Lion’s effects when I knew they were the problem, and third-party apps subsequently dealt with the issue entirely.

And then iOS 7 happened. In an instant, Apple’s smartphone switched its familiar but largely static interface to a minimalist effort packed full of animations. Parallax wobbled about on the Home Screen. Folders blasted towards your face at incredible speed. Within half an hour, I realised I couldn’t use my iPhone.

I wasn’t alone. In a piece for The Guardian, I spoke to several people who were suffering, along with spokespeople for vestibular disorder societies who confirmed this was a real problem that could potentially impact millions. I received personal messages from many more folks desperate for a solution.

The piece was widely shared. Online, I faced significant scepticism. People noted I wrote about mobile games, and so how could these animations affect me? But by that point I’d rapidly learned with vestibular accessibility – in fact, any accessibility – that everyone is different.

With vestibular conditions, some people are floored by parallax, but it doesn’t affect others. Some can cope with iOS folder animations. For others, it might mean being dizzy for a few minutes – or a few days. Personally, I can enjoy motion-based entertainment where I can anticipate what’s next – roller coasters; driving games – but am knocked back by abrupt animation I cannot prepare for and that takes up a significant portion of my field of view.

The article – and presumably other feedback – must have reached suitably senior people at Apple, because fixes subsequently arrived. They weren’t total, but they also weren’t an end point. Over the years since, I’ve swapped quite a few messages with Apple’s accessibility team. One involved slide transitions for nested menus on iPhone. In my sole live WWDC, I was fortunate to attend an accessibility session where it was revealed the animation could be disabled in the Settings app. Reader, I may have shed a tear.

It’s ten years since that Guardian article was published. Accessibility remains an odd beast. Far too many people consider accessibility to be solely about helping people with vision issues to use technology. But increasingly we do see a wider understanding of accessibility, in that it needs to be for everyone – something I wrote about for the dearly departed MacUser back in 2015. That we now have accessible games controllers is a genuinely exciting development.

However, I’d still like more software developers to bake in accessibility as a default. Start with an accessible foundation, rather than plug gaps later. But I do appreciate companies from the tiniest indie to massive corporations increasingly take this subject seriously, including catering for people with vestibular conditions. And I hope if you have any accessibility concerns yourself, you’ll be met with the kindness I’ve received from Apple’s teams.

Speaking of, that action button screen on the new iPhones is a vestibular trigger. Time to write another quick email…

Double tap is a new flagship feature of the new Apple Watch. But some folks will recognise it as recycled rather than new. That’s because it looks an awful lot like an evolution of existing accessibility feature AssistiveTouch. Which is good – Apple should do more to surface useful accessibility benefits.

As someone who’s spent a decade fighting for better accessibility features, I’m fairly well versed in what’s on offer. What people perhaps aren’t aware of is that you needn’t wait for Apple to bring an accessibility feature to the mainstream for more people to find it useful – loads of great stuff is in there already.

Something I make use of daily, and that always sparks interest when I mention it on social media, is proofing copy using speech features on Mac and iPad. I find that when text is read to me, I pick up more errors than I would from reading it silently myself.

On Mac, open System Settings and head to Accessibility > Spoken Content. Under System voice, you can choose from a number of voices and accents. I find those that present as female offer more clarity, due to being less bassy. Kate is a good option for Brits. But also, consider using accents that align with audiences when writing for people beyond your own country. Anyway, to add more voices, go to Manage Voices…

To preview how your voice sounds, press Play Sample. I find the default speed too slow for proofing and tend to increase it to about 75%.

Next, turn on Speak selection, click the info button, and gnash at how horrible this interface is compared to the System Preferences days. Create a keyboard shortcut to trigger speech selection. Make this memorable, accessible and something that won’t clash with shortcuts used elsewhere. I use Control+§  – § being the ‘section’ sign at the top-left of UK-English keyboards. You probably never use it.

Also set Show controller to Never, or it will appear whenever you use the feature. The remaining settings determine how your Mac visually keeps track of your place in the text as it’s being spoken. Settings here are a matter of taste. I tend to have Spoken Content highlight words and sentences – yellow for words; purple for sentences; background colour for style. 

Once you’re done, position your cursor in a document at the point you’d like the Mac to start reading from and use your shortcut. A second press will stop it speaking. You can also select text and have the Mac read just that selection.

Not all apps and websites behave. I’ve never been able to get Google Docs to work with Spoken Content in Safari, but it works in Chrome when you select text. (A good workaround is to hurl Google Docs into the sun and use something else.)

Note that iPad has Spoken Content as well. In Settings, go to Accessibility > Spoken Content and turn on both Speak Selection and Speak Screen. Adjust Typing Feedback and Voices preferences to suit.

When selecting and tapping a selection, you’ll see a Speak option. Alternatively, two-finger swipe down from the top of the screen (from the bezel) to read the entire document. This doesn’t work as well as the Mac equivalent, but it’s better than nothing. Of course, it doesn’t work with Google Docs. Tsk.

On Windows and/or using Microsoft Word? Search online for ‘read aloud’, which is in broadly the same space.

Some quick(ish) thoughts on Apple’s recent event, over and above anything already published in the press.

Apple’s notably been simultaneously praised and lambasted for a sketch on its green credentials. I found the sketch itself cringeworthy, but others loved it. More broadly, though, I’m glad Apple is taking action on green issues, and I hope that acts as a catalyst for more of the industry to do the same. However, claims from companies being parroted helps no-one. Yet I can’t see anyone paying for the research and journalism required to deep dive into Apple’s facts and figures. And, let’s face it, there is going to be at least some sleight of hand in there. Just the mention of carbon credits alone is enough to give people in the green industry pause. A net positive, then, but not yet a slam dunk.

Looking at the hardware, the Apple Watch line got a minor iterative upgrade, albeit with a new SIP that made developers happy (more power) and annoyed (dropping support for older models makes vocal uses angry). The new double tap gesture is interesting and appears to build on an earlier accessibility feature. That’s smart thinking from Apple, but I do sometimes think more of its accessibility settings should be surfaced in the other settings sections across its hardware – and that publications should do more to alert people to them.

The iPhones were suitably souped up. You can see with the iPhone 15 where Apple believes users will and won’t care about things, in trade-offs regarding profitability and features. It having a 60Hz display when a slew of cheaper Android blowers are way beyond that is strange to me. But perhaps not enough people outside the geek sphere give two hoots. And, to be fair, while once I went ‘Retina’ I couldn’t go back, the switch between 60 and 120Hz displays isn’t nearly as pronounced.

Dynamic Island now being a default feature of the latest iPhones is a good thing. I imagine eventually Apple will figure out how to hide its front camera tech beneath the display, but until then I still think this is a smart compromise, making a feature out of what would otherwise be a negative. However, it’s underused. There has been developer interest, but not as much as Apple would have hoped for – and that must come down to it until now being exclusively part of the iPhone Pro models. The risk was another Touch Bar. This latest change should counter and end such concerns.

Beyond that, the new iPhone colours all seem dull and muted, presumably because that’s what people will buy. The new camera system in the iPhone 15 is welcome. The Pro using titanium suggests it’ll no longer be a finger magnet. Those phones being lighter is extremely welcome, as is the custom side button. The Pro’s positioning as a gaming powerhouse now needs to be matched by Apple itself having a cultural shift at the most senior level to support such efforts. And, for once, seeing pricing drop for iPhones in the UK was rather fun. (Apple’s gymnastics in the US – that the iPhone Pro Max isn’t more expensive because it’s the same price as that memory tier was last year – aren’t needed in the UK, where the base price is unchanged. Which means here the low-end Pro Max nets you an 128GB of additional storage for no extra outlay.)

Still no Home indicator off switch, mind. Gnash.

It looks like there’s growing consensus that Dynamic Island’s primary interaction model is wrong. Michael Tsai compiles commentary across two posts, which include people grumping about how a tap on Dynamic Island opens an app, whereas a long-press is required to expand what’s in the island to use its controls. Everyone from Nilay Patel at The Verge to John ‘Daring Fireball’ Gruber seems to want the opposite.

I’ve taken a contrary viewpoint. The iOS Home Screen has long had a similar interaction model. Whether you’re interacting with an icon or a widget, a tap opens an app, whereas a long press (and, previously, Force Touch) exists for actions. To my mind, Dynamic Island follows this existing convention, rather than making up new ones. So if a timer’s in the island, you tap-hold to perform a contextual action, or tap to open the item’s app. Even if you take a more desktop analogy of minimising to a ‘dock’ (which is in some ways how Dynamic Island presents), Apple is being consistent in this regard.

Rob Jonson on Twitter disagrees, arguing we’re effectively talking about a long press for a quick interaction and a tap for a deeper one (that is, opening the app), which “doesn’t seem right to me”. He asks: “Put it another way – is the dynamic island primarily the holder of the full app, or the holder of the expanded dynamic island?”

I’m clearly in the minority here (albeit, at present, a minority that includes Apple), but it’d feel odd to me if a long-press in Dynamic Island was the route to launching an app, just the same as it’d be weird elsewhere in the operating system.

Kevin Archer is an indie developer who makes Authenticator App by 2Stable, a feature-rich, premium and suitably named take on, well, an authenticator app. There are of course other, similar, apps on the App Store. But he today revealed just how similar.

On Twitter, he claimed another developer lifted text from his app (including a section on Apple Watch support, despite the other app not supporting Apple’s wearable). When testing the app, Archer found a review request during onboarding, which doesn’t appear to align with Apple guidelines. And, naturally, there’s a weekly IAP subscription, because of course there is.

That’s all bad enough, but the dodgy app popped up a second time, with a different icon. The linked thread outlines how the app is not only a straight clone of the other scammy app (right down to what appears to be integrated stock art), but also directly lifts copy and functionality from Archer’s app.

On Twitter, Archer rightly said he didn’t understand how these apps pass review with features that don’t work, a copied design and a weekly subscription. He added that every day, indie devs like him get “apps rejected for silly things”, while these scammy apps sneak through.

It’s reasonable to argue Apple cannot deal with a flood of daily apps to review that might circumvent copyright – and that certain things aren’t liable to such protections anyway. If someone steals the ideas within an app, tough (broadly). Actual content is another matter, mind. But you might counter by using an argument from Apple itself that the App Store is meant to be better. It’s supposed to be curated. It should be a place where developers thrive, not where they play whac-a-mole with pretenders ripping them off.

Mind you, Archer told me even getting to whac-a-mole stage isn’t easy. Although you might reasonably argue Apple cannot pre-emptively police its store, surely it makes it easy for developers to flag when their apps are ripped off? Archer suggested otherwise: “One of the main issues with the App Store team is that you can’t contact them directly. You can contact developer support, but they are in charge of technical issues and told us on the phone they can’t put us in contact with the App Store team.”

Archer says he’s submitted a report via the App Store’s ‘report a problem’ feature and is hoping for the best. Meanwhile, Apple regularly argues that when devs hit a problem that running to the press won’t solve them. History suggests otherwise; but if Apple really doesn’t want issues to be fixed by bad press, perhaps it should give developers the tools to flag problems more rapidly with those who can actually do something about them – who then should, very swiftly, take action.

Update: MacRumors wrote about the situation yesterday. Apple has since removed both apps from the App Store.