Welcome to the Access Wizard Rant.
Topic: Apple, beta testing. the brilliance.
Without making this a 5-page essay on how much we appreciate accessibility (which we do, otherwise this post wouldn’t be here). Without getting into fanboy drivel about free VoiceOver, ponies and unicorns it comes with. Here goes:
• Apple does a poor job with accessibility QA.
• Instead they rely on beta testers .
• Beta testers HAVE TO PAY APPLE ?
Fantastic!
The average Joe says:
• OSX. Apple sends out invites to its blind users. If you don’t get one just torrent the developer preview.
• iOS. Just know a developer and be nice to them. They might link your UDID to their account.
These points raise some serious concerns.
1. Invites are sent out arbitrarily. No rime nor reason. You may not know a darn thing about submitting bugs nor testing and still get an invite. …In contrast you might be a great beta tester but get no invite. Sadly, most invites are sent out as a PR move. To people that write glowing reviews.
2. Torrenting? Civil offence last time we checked. …NOt a solution.
3. Know an iOS developer? Good luck if you don’t.
Of course none of this is a problem at all because we don’t live in a perfect world. Nothing is perfect so nothing is a problem. Rejoice.
Sincerely,
Yours truly.
