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To this day, I don't know what it was meant for (lemmy.ca)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I really think it's less "I don't understand and hate this accessibility feature" than "why is my computer suddenly interrupting what I'm doing to announce a feature I don't need?" The press-5-times thing is the problem. Why would a mobility-limited person even think that was how you turn it on, rather than say... knowing where in the Config panel it is, or turning it on during the computer's initial setup?

Computers also don't default to having a screen reader going, TVs don't usually default to having captions turned on (I'd personally love this being the norm, haha). It's a strange option to suddenly activate due to an arcane key combo. It'd be like turning on the magnifier because you quad-clicked on something.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why would a mobility-limited person even think that was how you turn it on?

Because it is a standard PC feature codified by ISO, present in all computers since 1994 that was specifically required by organizations for the rights of people with disabilities who had to fight the tech giants for it based on the direct feedback from people with disabilities, and sometimes was implemented in secrecy by rogue developers who believed on it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I feel like you're being deliberately rude and not reading what I said now. First off, thanks for dismissively passing me a link I need to pay $237 to read, no thanks ISO, but also I bet it doesn't say you must enable sticky keys by pressing the key 5 times.

I know this because Macs don't have this terrible shortcut enabled. You just turn sticky keys on in the Accessibility options. I also know this because the other article you posted tells the story of Gregg Vanderheiden, who wrote the first sticky keys driver in assembly and used the 5-press as a hack to signal for his driver to take over. Once the feature was officially implemented, the 5-press should no longer have been needed as a trigger.

And in fact, the "rogue developer" (Ed Tecot) who bravely worked on accessibility features from further down in the backlog for the Mac didn't implement the 5-press either. And that article specifically calls out Microsoft, by the original designer, for having a bad shortcut!

It’s turned off by default on Macs—as the inventors intended. “You want sticky keys turned off by default because it’s just going to annoy them,” shared Vanderheiden in the call. “It doesn’t help you, it doesn’t help them, it doesn’t help the disability community.” But somehow, the wires got crossed with Windows, and to this day it’s enabled by default, an accidental 5-Shift-press away from discovery.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago

You asked “Why would a mobility-limited person even think that was how you turn it on?”

They know because they were the ones who asked for it. Just like the first thing a person learning to use computers is what the mouse clics does, the first thing a person with disabilities learn when dealing with computers is what the disabilities functions are, they are widely documented. The very popup that MS shows up has an extensive explanation of what it is and link to disable it immediately.