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Comment by erifneerg | Hacker News Reader

> Jailbreaking is also critical to ensuring that the disabled are able to use their mobile devices as easily as possible.

This reason, while good and noble, feels really wonky. From what i understand, iOS's accessibility has much miles better then Android's accessibility options. If their main motives is to give a better mobile experience to people with special needs, maybe focusing on implementing these improvements system wide changes would be time better spend.

You work hard to make these changes then iOS 7.x.y comes out and the user updates by mistake and loses all the changes a jailbreak gives. It is this constant fighting with the system that has made staying with iOS less appealing these days.

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Worrying about updates is a fact of everyday life for people dependent on accessibility features, on the OS as well as the APP level. Updates to apps often include changes to UI, which completely change the way blind users interact with the App via VoiceOver. This means that with every update there is a risk of the app no longer being accessible or having to relearn the entire interface.

It's true that Apple's accessibility features are miles better than Android's, but they aren't perfect. Jailbreaking allows people to add the functionality they need that isn't currently supported.

A great example of this is f.lux which is an amazingly useful app for people with low-vision, but is not supported on non-jailbroken devices.

f.lux is single handedly keeping me on my iOS 5 jailbreak. I used to need an hour to get to sleep at night. Now with f.lux it takes me 5-10 minutes.

Absolutely no way I'd use a phone with regular lighting now.

That was true on Android 2.3.. Things are inverted now.

But anyone with visual disability will still have to scavenge for a phone with actual buttons. And good luck with that...

Everything I've ever heard, including in this thread, says that iOS and its apps are still way ahead of Android and its apps in accessibility. I'm not very personally familiar with the accessibility on either so I can't say, but I'd be surprised if this has changed as radically as you say.

you should do some research then. for a blind person, IOS7 is unusable. while recent samsungs are almost fine... though i hate pretty much everything samsung did with android, the accessibility stuff was ok.

There are tons of blind and vision-impaired users using iOS 7 and a quick web search shows articles praising the improvements for those users. No doubt there are vision-impaired users who don't like it, too, but it's silly to make a blanket statement that it's unusable.

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