No, and that should have occurred to me. Thank you. I’ll try it next time (if I remember, which is not a sure thing).
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I have a MacBook Pro with two screens (one a 21”) and I find myself using my iPhone even when I’m standing at my desk. Yeah, my eyesight isn’t what it use to be, but I found I can increase the font size on my phone to compensate (I also have a 7 Plus which helps).
Apple has marvelous accessibility features and everyone should take a look at them and play with them. I like VoiceOver which speaks the page content. Many times I pull up a webpage and just use VoiceOver to read it to me while I walk around.
One of the amazing videos is David Pogue on VoiceOver. Pogue interviews a highly successful and legally blind financial adviser who uses the accessibility features on his phone.
I’ve talked with several legally blind people. One friend told me he was extremely worried when the iPhone came out that he would find himself isolated via technology. He tells me the iPhone has really connected him to society like no other device. And as a bonus, he keeps his display off, so his phone lasts a week on a single charge. Plus, he’s never been forced to watch a cat video.
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I worked as an Apple developer in the blindness software business back in the 80s, and I’m gratified that Apple has taken nonvisual accessibility to heart.
I love the simple “bold text” toggle in iOS as my vision deteriorates–wish macOS had that easy setting as well.
For expert peer help on using magnification, VoiceOver, and braille input/output, AppleVis is an outstanding resource. It’s a volunteer community with software and hardware reviews, step-by-step guides to many tasks, and great bug tracking.
Jesse the K wrote: “For expert peer help on using magnification”
Unfortunately, the in-phone magnifier doesn’t help you read the phone. Which is why I keep a real magnifier in my pocket. (actually two, a 4x singlet for normal stuff and a 10x hastings triplet for multi-legged critters.) A real magnifier is so much faster and more convenient to use than fiddling with a phone.
I think Jesse was referring to the Zoom feature to magnify the iOS screen. The Zoom feature absolutely does help one read the phone itself and the customization options are quite sophisticated now, letting people use it however it works best for them.
The iOS Magnifier feature lets you use the camera and screen as a digital replacement for a physical magnifying glass. I can imagine many cases where using a magnifying glass is faster, easier, and more comfortable for extended periods, like reading a book. What digital magnifiers like iOS’s can do is not only make things look bigger but can further help viewability/readability by allowing one to zoom in/out, increase contrast, and/or reversing colors or using false colors. It can also “freeze” an image (i.e. take a picture but not save it to the Camera Roll) so the device doesn’t have to be held up to what’s being looked at, helpful when the subject is in an awkward location or one’s hands are not completely steady.
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