How A Simple Apple Feature Called Switch Control Is Changing Lives
BuzzFeed - Latest 2015-07-28
Summary:
YouTube
On April 3, 2012, Christopher Hills posted a clip to his YouTube account. In the three-minute video, Hills squarely addresses his webcam from what looks like his childhood bedroom. On the white walls behind him are a smattering of posters of high-end sports cars, jets, and rocket ships — it’s the kind of teen bedroom that’s been home to countless YouTube rants, confessions, and reviews. But Hills’s demeanor is serious as he begins talking about the rise of smartphones, tablets, and touchscreen technology. “I am going to show you how touchscreens help me,” he says to the camera. Moments later, we see Hills in his wheelchair, facing a desk with an iPad perched atop. We watch Christopher, a resident of Queensland, Australia, move forward slightly, struggle for a moment, and then pause, unable to reach the iPad screen.
“I keep reading things about the touchscreen overtaking the mouse and keyboard and this really scares me,” he confesses into the camera. Hills’ Athetoid cerebral palsy has left him unable to walk or use his hands, and, at that moment in 2012, his fears were understandable. "I think touchscreens are an amazing technology, but my disability means I can't use my hands — so let's face it,” he says. The video — shot, edited, and posted by Hills — is an arresting reminder of an alarming truth: Technologies aimed at, hyped by, and marketed toward an able-bodied majority often overlook the eager constituency of the disabled.
For Hills, that fear and frustration began to subside after 2013. That’s when Apple introduced Switch Control, an accessibility feature that helps those with limited mobility to navigate, select, and manipulate iOS touchscreen devices with the click of a button, movement of the body, or any number of alternative inputs (blowing into a tube, etc.). Launched as a feature in iOS 7, Switch Control gave Christopher and thousands of others the opportunity to finally take command of touch displays inside Apple’s applications as well as third-party programs, like games and browsers, without the use of expensive third-party devices. For Hills, though, nothing was as satisfying or memorable as being able to perform the most elemental functions.
“The thing that comes to mind is the day I made my first phone call. I was 15. I was able to call mum at work. As you can imagine, this was a very big thing,” Hills told BuzzFeed News of using Switch Control for the first time.
For decades, accessibility technology has seemed an afterthought for the world’s most powerful technology companies, leaving those who require additional assistive features with largely outdated technology or, in the case of touchscreens, no access at all.” The biggest problem used to be a general lag in software,” Elizabeth Ellcessor, a professor at Indiana University who specializes in digital media and accessibility studies told BuzzFeed News. “Software would come out and companies wouldn’t build in accessibility features for years and by that time the piece of software would be out of date,” she said.
For Hills, a gadget fan, the lag was excruciating. “When the iPhone came out, I was using these devices that were designed in the time of the Apple Newton and had not improved since then,” he told Buzzfeed News.
But the problems with assistive tech innovations were more than just inconvenient. The Dynamo, an assistive switching tool and universal remote for desktop computers that Hills used before Switch Control, cost thousands of dollars and could only serve the most basic communications functions. “Typing on the PC was possible, but it was extremely slow and, as a result, I always needed to have a [caregiver], mostly Dad, to help me whenever I needed to type more than just a few words,” Hills said.
Around the time Hills made his video about touchscreens, he was beginning to worry that he might never get to play games or even make phone calls like millions of his peers; the touchscreen revolution, he feared would leave him behind. “I knew how hard it was finding assistive technology solutions to control my desktop and here was a completely new thing and it just didn’t seem like anybody would be able to come up with a solution very quickly,” he wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News.
But in the mid-2000s, Apple began a full overhaul of its assistive program with an emphasis on building accessibility features into