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Thursday, July 14, 2011

What is Assistive Touch?


Apple's mobile operating system iOS is gold standard for accessibility on mobile devices. In the fall Apple with release iOS 5 with a host of new accessibility features. Some of the new features are assistive touch, LED flash indicator light and custom vibrations. This post will outline the assistive touch feature built into iOS 5. Assistive touch is meant to help people with physical disabilities use their iOS devices more effectively. For example if a user is unable to press the home button because of a physical disability they could use assistive touch to activate the home button with out actually pressing the physical home button. Assistive touch can replace all hardware buttons with software equivalents to make the device easier to use. Another great use of assistive touch is programing custom gestures to use later. For example you could program a two finger swipe down and add the button to assistive touch. Then whenever you need to do a two finger swipe down you can press the button to activate the gesture. (see video for farther explanation) Assistive touch makes navigating and using an iOS device much easier for someone with a physical disability. The assistive touch feature will debut with iOS 5 this fall. For more on accessibility features in iOS 5 click here

14 comments:

  1. Do you know a similar app for Android OS? Thanks in advance.

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    1. Hi. Thank you for the question. Assistive Touch is built into every iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. I don't know of any alternatives for Android but I will be on the look out. Please follow the blog to get notified if I find an Android alternative. Thanks

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    2. Smart Task Switcher Pro works same as Assistive touch but has more functionalities. It's worth a try
      -Ace

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  2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  3. Hey, I looked under settings and everything u said and I couldn't find the assistive touch setting

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  4. You may have to update your phone

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  5. Its on iPhone 4? Is your phone is older version. This option is very useful.

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  6. Hi
    Does anyone know how to do a print screen With thé assistive touch?

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    Replies
    1. Great question. Currently in iOS 5 the screen shot feature is not present in assistive touch. Tomorrow when iOS 6 is released this will be one of the new features. Stay tuned for more information tomorrow.

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    2. What do u use gestures for?

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  7. It's just intended to help the disabled people, what about the non-disabled ones? I find it worthless. I am using iPhone 4 and I find it an obstacle to be slinking about the screen, corner to corner, I many times have to slide it away to get access to the icons. Recently I have decided to disable it.

    Wilson

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  8. It's just intended to help the disabled people, what about the non-disabled ones? I find it worthless. I am using iPhone 4 and I find it an obstacle to be slinking about the screen, corner to corner, I many times have to slide it away to get access to the icons. Recently I have decided to disable it.

    Wilson

    ReplyDelete