OK, I've even talked to Apple Accessibility about this now on about the 3rd supposed senior advisor, and I'm either being told with no explanation that I'm "not doing this right," or I'm being told "I don't know, and don't really have an active way to test things on my end." I'm therefore hoping and praying someone in the Applevis community will know what on earth is wrong.
So, I've got an Apple Watch series 4, and noticed on my iPhone 13 Pro Max running iOS 16 along side WatchOS 9, if I open up the watch app on the phone, go to accessibility, Voiceover, then finally scroll all the way to the bottom and go to "hand gestures", if I turn the toggle in there to on, I'm supposed to apparently be able to navigate by holding my hand a ways over the top of my watch face and doing things like a single pinch by touching my thumb and index finger together to move to next item, I guess kind of like a flick right one time on the screen. It says by default, a single clenched fist should activate the current item, a double clench presses the digital crown, and a double pinch of the thumb/ index should move to previous item. Despite anything I try however, even though the hand gestures are toggled on, it definitely is not working. One advisor thought I was talking about assistive touch, but I kept telling him over and over and over, this is not something I found in accessibility/assistive touch. This is spoecifically in the Voiceover settings screen when you go on the phone's watch app, then accessibility, and finally Voiceover. What I couldn't seem to determine is, does assistive touch have to be enabled along side it also being toggled on here in the Voiceover settings to work. All advisors up to this point are telling me no. I only need to turn it on in the Voiceover settings. The only time I'd turn it on otherwise would be if I were not using Voiceover but were instead only using assistive touch, which of course, I'm not using, nor planning to use.
I asked if any advisors had an apple watch they could test with, but go figure why doesn't this surprise me in the least, nope nope nopey nope. No one has a watch. Don't get me startted on my opinions of them working with customers on products they can't even test nor have any simulators or pictures they can look at to better assist, says them. I've even asked them to do an FYI and see what the engineers say and schedule a follow up. They won't up to this point even do that for me! They did a diag on my phone to see if the sensors were fudged up, which I already damn well knew they weren't broken. And of course, sure enough, the test came back that all was working just fine. Even after that, they still insisted not to escolate things up the latter. They keep just saying, you're doing it wrong. When I said, OK, then show me what I'm doing wrong, as my brother, nor my mom who by the way is sighted can't get it to work either, they keep telling me, just practice with it more, and over time you'll get it to work.
I really freakin wish they'd quit denying things that most likely they know are broken but're too imbarrassed to admit it.
So the trillion dollar question: has anyone gotten this to work, and if so, how in the blessed night's sun did you do it!
Thanks.
Comments
This has to be on the hand that is wearing it.
I noticed that you said you had your hands away from the display. The gestures need to be done on the hand that is wearing the watch, not holding your other hand above the display. There’s no way for it to see your other hand doing that, so yes, that won’t work.
Mkes so much more sense
Biometrics on your hand, wearing the watch, should activate the gestures you want. One curious question remains. If you are on the phone with an apple advisor, explaining things, and they are saying you're doing it wrong, how can they fix it remotely? I ask because if you'd taken the watch to the genius bar, explained your situation, they visually saw your perform the gestures with no results, wouldn't that help them diagnose and fix your problem? If the previous suggestion won't work, the best bet is to go to Apple themselves with the watch. though your mom might be sighted, obviously you'd get much more out of someone who I don't know, works with the product every day. :) good luck. Just take a breath and be patient. I get it's annoying but flipping out doesn't solve much right? Good luck.
A couple of things I wanna address.
First off, I don't have an Apple store near enough to me where that is an option. Please don't up an out assume. Even if that were an option for me, I'm vulnerable due to certain health matters which I don't feel like going into here, but with the pandemic, that would be a huge risk factor for me going out right now in public. As for how they'd remotely fix things, that was not my expectation. My expectation is that they would have pushed things up the latter to investigate. Did the person who responded earlier up here have to be here to fix the problem? No? They knew what I was doing wrong quite easily based on how I described things. Believe me, as much as people may think the Genious Bar is great, and I'm not saying I ever said it wasn't, but it's not the only option. the fact is, whether you all up on Applevis want to admit it or not, these are things the agents should be trained upon to some level. I'm not asking them to know the stuff like we know it since we use it every day, but I'd at least expect if you're gonna work in accessibility, then for the love of god at least know the basics. I mean, these guys couldn't even tell me what the hand gestures did. In fact, a few of them didn't even know it existed, nor did they know there was such thing as "assistive touch." Frankly, I could see them not knowing about the hand gestures themselves, but not knowing even about A.T when you work in the department that would support that feature, to me, that's pretty downright pathetic. You can call it what you wish, but I call it what it is. Not trying to be rude, but just am voicing my opinion. It's ok if you disagree, but, yeah... Getting back to the issue at hand though, I'll give that a try once my watch gets charged and I put it back on.
Podcast
Sad thing I do not think anyone has made a podcast on using the jesters. Do not know if it works with VO. Strange that AppleVis has not made a podcast about it, if they did I miss it.
Try this
Even though you have turned on hand gestures in settings, you also have to turn on the use of hand gestures by tapping your screen once to wake it up, then clench your hand to make a fist twice quickly. You should then hear a sound and be able to do the gestures.
You can then also do a double clench of your hand again to stop using the gestures as you likely wouldn’t want them to be enabled all of the time.
It definitely does work
So, that was my entire problem. I was trying to do the gestures with my other hand. Whoops? Now that I understand it's with the same hand as what is wearing the watch, it works perfectly. Not sure after all if I'll really ever make use of this feature, but it is pretty cool, nonetheless, and I'm glad I finally got to try it out.
Knowing your device’s capabilities helps
If you had taken the time to become familiar with your Apple Watch’s technical specifications, or hell, even just paid attention to the list of apps it has, you’d have known the Apple Watch had no camera with which to detect gestures done with the opposite hand. 🤦‍♂️ Besides, except while water lock is enabled, it would make no logical sense for the gestures to be done with the opposite hand, when it would generally be easier to just touch the display.
No worries
I've found accessibility documentation to be somewhat lacking in certain areas on the watch. It took me a couple of days to figure out taptic time with Voiceover on, and I installed the band upside-down the first time around. It happens from time to time. There's so much tech packed into these that it's easy to forget what it can and can't do when you start out.
This is exactly why!
This is exactly why I hardly ever post or do anything in the Applevis community. Every time I post I get pushback, and I'm frankly sick of it! @Paul, I did look at all the specifications. For your information, I train people for a living on using these devices, and one of my family members works for Apple, so, I therefore through him/her am even that much more! familiar. And, to drive my point home even further, you've obviously never heard of a proxemity sensor. How the F*** do you think it detects palm over the screen to put the screen to sleep, or hold palm over the watch to go into silent mode. Before you start assuming that I didn't look at things, maybe try asking open ended questions to be helpful instead of making an utter ass of yourself. Thank? you!
Christopher Giland is at it again.
Settle down dude! No need to take everything personally.
Podcast on hand gestures for Apple Watch
This podcast was done by David Woodbridge hoo has done many great podcasts for the blind community on Apple products. Hope this helps.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/isee-using-various-technologies-from-a-blind/id423121261?i=1000539949518
wow.
Paul, you don't need to be so harsh about this, I never put much faith in this hole blind comunity thing, it's very american and just not a thing here in the UK, but if I did; I'd completely see why people would want to leave the comunity behind with posts like that.
Why be so snarky on a post where someone just wanted help.
Note to @BradBrad, Thank you…
Note to @BradBrad,
Thank you for your comment message! I very well appreciate your support, and even more so you advocating for me for asking up here for assistance. It really means a lot to me. Really, it truly does! Have a fabulous rest of your day, sir.
Christopher Gilland?
Who's that? That's not my name. I'd rather not disclose my real name for security reasons, but I'll just leave it to say it's not Christopher. I think you're confused. Smile.
Never
Never used and probably will not. The haptic tap of the phones works well. I know it did not work well for others but so far good. Using Series 7.
Sometimes
I sometimes use it for Taptic time.
The standard Taptic time gesture of a double tap isn’t as reliable as I’d like, though is still usually what I do. I use this method sometimes when my other hand isn’t free to perform the double tap, like if I’m carrying something.
I’d also like to echo Brad’s comment. The original question was perfectly reasonable and didn’t deserve Paul’s response.
Dave
Agree
Yes, I seen it many times when someone ask for help or make a comment. Sad but there it is.
@glassheart.
No problem.
I'll always stick up for people where I can.