Steven Aquino, writing at Curb Cuts, bouncing off my post about the new Clear/Tinted toggle that appeared in this week’s betas:
Hackett notes Apple’s placement of the Liquid Glass control is surprising as he believed “a control like this would land in Accessibility.” However a logical presumption, it’s not really a hardcore accessibility feature. Here’s the thing about accessibility features, on iOS or Android or anywhere else: they’re a discrete, specialized—and admittedly esoteric—suite of settings intended to meet highly specific needs. While it’s true “accessibility is for everyone” for the most part, the majority of the options under Accessibility are decidedly opinionated in their target demographic.
Take the AssistiveTouch pointer, for instance. AssistiveTouch is itself a subset of specialized features aimed at aiding those with motor disabilities; as such, the pointer has been expressly designed to serve that greater purpose. This focus is why, as one anecdote, the response to the AssistiveTouch pointer rankled me a few years ago. Apple added it for a reason. Indeed, the company’s senior director of global accessibility policy and initiatives Sarah Herrlinger told me in an interview at the time it “isn’t your traditional pointer,” yet the iPadOS power users were so desperate for proper pointer support, many in the community appropriated the AssistiveTouch pointer and lamented how it doesn’t work like your aforementioned traditional pointer. But it wasn’t conceived to be conventional… my understanding is Apple’s Accessibility group “handed off” the AssistiveTouch functionality to the wider OS team to be further massaged into the mainstream pointer feature that exists today. I got pushback from a lot of people for explaining all of this under the notion AssistiveTouch isn’t perfect and warrants criticism… to which I still say, sure, but it isn’t meant for you and your nerdy whims.
His point that this toggle is about personal presence, and not providing a one-switch-does-it-all Accessibility settings makes a lot of sense to me. As Aquino points out, features like Reduce Transparency do much more to change the UI to make it more readable for those who need it. He goes on:
As I wrote following the WWDC keynote, I sat with Herrlinger for a few minutes after the presentation, and while I didn’t conduct a full, on the record interview, I was able to attribute to her that the Accessibility team worked “closely” with the Design team to make Liquid Glass as visually accessible as possible. Reduce Transparency will always be there if you really and truly require the extra oomph it offers, she said to me.
A bunch of folks ran around this summer claiming that Liquid Glass flew in the face of Apple’s Accessibility work, but that take never sat well with me. Apple takes this stuff really seriously.