Apple is lying about its commitment to accessibility on macOS

[zevrix]

I'm reposting here my FB17602742, submitted yesterday:

The strong wording of this message comes from years of Apple ignoring the needs of users who can't tolerate UI animations and convulsions.

At this point, it's clear that Apple is either intentionally harming users like me or simply doesn't care about meeting even the most basic accessibility standards on macOS.

Yes, many UI animations and convulsions can, fortunately, be disabled - but not through straightforward UI controls. Instead, users are forced to look for obscure Terminal commands found scattered across the Internet.

The "Reduce motion" checkbox in System Settings is simply a fake control that doesn't do anything - instead of actually disabling all UI animations and convulsions.

What's worse, two of the most offensive UI animations cannot be disabled at all. Apple has consistently dismissed requests to let users disable the following UI animations:

1. Scroll bar rollover highlight effect (introduced on macOS 10.7.3). Every time the cursor passes over a scroll bar, it gets highlighted. This draws the user's attention to random scroll bars for no reason - just because the cursor happened to pass over them. It results in HUNDREDS of unnecessary, annoying events of distraction daily!

2. Expand/collapse animation of NSOutlineView (e.g., when opening/closing folders in the list view in the Finder, or any other app using outline views). This animation is extremely distracting, irritating, and time-wasting.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day is approaching.

Dear Apple,
Please adhere to the most basic accessibility standards. Stop the needless suffering of countless users like me. Let us disable the two aforementioned UI convulsions.

Thank you for your attention to the issue.

 

[Nermal]

Even those of us who don't need accessibility accommodations can find it overkill. For example, in recent times (since OS 15?) clicking the clock the first time each day will now show yesterday's date, then it will pause for about a second, and then it'll show an animation of the date incrementing. What was wrong with just showing the correct date in the first place?!

 

[zevrix]

1. Scroll bar rollover highlight effect (introduced on macOS 10.7.3). Every time the cursor passes over a scroll bar, it gets highlighted. This draws the user's attention to random scroll bars for no reason - just because the cursor happened to pass over them. It results in HUNDREDS of unnecessary, annoying events of distraction daily!

Astonishingly, Apple did address this on Tahoe: the scroll bar rollover effect is gone. I noticed it in the very first beta but didn't want to mention it until I'd see it in the final release. The Apple feedback team also sent me a follow-up that this issue has been addressed. Well it only took Apple 14 years but they did it finally.

To me, this change alone is a sufficient reason to upgrade to Tahoe (in addition to the redesigned alert dialogs). This outweighs even the array of detrimental UI changes Apple sure as hell introduced on Tahoe.

 

[MayflyMaven]

The "Reduce motion" checkbox in System Settings is simply a fake control that doesn't do anything - instead of actually disabling all UI animations and convulsions.

I agree that it could do more (and I wish more developers would pay attention to that setting). I find Apple's indeterminate progress indicator (the bar, not the circle) particularly annoying, the way that it bounces back and forth is just obnoxious. I filed a feedback on that back in 2020 (specific to not being affected by the "Reduce motion" setting) to no avail.

Well it only took Apple 14 years but they did it finally.

OK, 9 more years to go for mine