iOS7 Readability
| Originator: | janine.sisk | ||
| Number: | rdar://14547902 | Date Originated: | 7/25/13 |
| Status: | Closed | Resolved: | |
| Product: | iPhone/iPod Touch | Product Version: | iOS7 |
| Classification: | UI/Usability | Reproducible: | Always |
I am one of those people mentioned in the keynote who need a bit more contrast to see things clearly. I'm not officially vision-impaired; I don't even have accessibility turned on on any of my devices. But I do have to have things under good light to be able to see them clearly. Most people experience a bit of this as we hit middle age, women especially, so I'm just slightly worse than most. The change from Helvetica Neue Light to Helvetica Neue was very helpful to my ability to read things in iOS7, but it's just not enough. Thin lines are fuzzy to me, even when they're black on white, and the colored labels for buttons are also hard to read for lack of contrast. The whole interface leaves me squinting slightly at my phone, and it's no longer a pleasure to use. For the first time , I'm having to memorize where the buttons are so that I don't have to look so closely at the device, and in my mind that's a "form over function" design fail. I'm not sure how much this will affect middle aged and older folks with better eyes than mine, but I've read enough complaints online just from developers to suspect that it may be quite a few. In addition to the practical aspects of the device being difficult to use, it reminds me every time I pick it up that my eyes aren't what they used to be, and no-one likes that. It would be really sad if this upgrade made a large group of people feel bad about themselves and their devices - what happened to delight and childlike wonder and all that? Some of the issues could be mitigated by making the system larger and/or heavier, but that would have the same effect of making me feel less-than every time I pick up the phone. I've never had to do that before on any device, and I'd rather that my iPhone not be the first. And it won't help at all with the thin lines and non-contrast-y colors. I am not a designer and won't presume to suggest how any of this could be fixed, but I implore you to give a bit more weight to readability and a bit less to cutting-edge design.
Comments
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Engineering asked whether the issue still occurs in DP4. My reply:
Sorry about the late reply; I was unable to log in to Bugreporter for a while there.
We're now up to DP5, so that is what I'm using for my comparison. I have not altered any Accessibility settings; this is with the "stock" OS.
Some things have improved, but on the whole the problems still remain. I'll cite a few examples:
Calendar: in the day view, the hour numbers down the left side are small and light grey, very hard to read. The mark showing the current time, which is a nice touch, is even smaller and hard to read even though orange has fairly good contrast.
Clock: I use the timer quite often. It's a good demonstration of the differences between colors. The green Start button is legible but fuzzy. As soon as it changes to the orange Pause button it's much sharper (to my eyes).
Status bar: the font is too small, making the time very difficult to see. It's fine in iOS6.
Photo gallery: the detail lines (the location of the picture set) is very small. I can read it, but just barely.
I could go on and on but I think that would just waste our time. You get the idea, I hope. I like the colors and think that you could still get the effect Mr Ive was going for without totally abandoning the "button" look and with larger font sizes across the board.