People with motor disabilities such as Spinal cord injury, Loss or damage of limb(s), Cerebral palsy, Muscular dystrophy, Multiple sclerosis etc have difficulty in using the limbs or fingers. Due to this difficulty, using certain gestures or tapping on a particular area of the screen will be extremely difficult. In certain cases use of physical button such as home button, volume and lock/ power button cannot be accomplished easily.
To make these user groups comfortable on IOS devices Assistive touch is provided under accessibility settings.
Where to find Assistive touch?
Follow the steps listed below to find assistive touch,
- Go to settings on the home screen.
- Go to General.
- Go to accessibility.
- Locate assistive touch under Physical & motor.
Switch on the assistive feature here. Now you will find a white dot on every screen including the lock screen. This menu is read out by voiceover as well.
Using AssistiveTouch
As stated above assistive touch is a small white dot that is appeared on the screen. Accessible even with voiceover and available on lock screen, Activating on this dot opens a menu with few options such as siri, Favorites, Device, home.
assistive touch in detail
Device
The device feature under assistive touch has the options such as “Lock screen, Mute/ unmute, Volume up and Volume down. For People who have certain disabilities and cannot use these physical buttons effectively can use the options available in the assistive touch menu. Another benefit I can think is for those who have damaged physical buttons on the device. If any of the physical buttons are not working or are damaged the options in the assistive touch can be an alternate.
Siri in the assistive touch menu activates voice guidance of the device called Siri, while the home option takes the user to the home screen which is equivalent to the physical home button.
Custom Gestures
Favorites is an another important and reliable accessible option which I will explain in a future blog.