However, I stick to using the Blue Light Filter Android app, which is amazing. Not sure if it's available for iOS.
I try and use it most of the time, and the shortcut makes it easy to see things in colour if needed.
I'm not surprised the good features are hidden behind Accessibility. I'd argue most other features on a phone are designed for someone else's benefit. Albeit cleverly disguised as benefits for the user.
While sloped, level curb cuts at intersections have been implemented primarily for accessibility legislation compliance, it turns out they are useful not only for the disabled but for people with strollers, heavy bags, etc. A similar effect can also be seen with the modern ubiquity of closed captioning.
So clearly affordances to assist the disabled are going to benefit everyone ... eventually.
MS also had a very interesting design for disability brochure that talked about how even a "regular" person can be temporarily disabled - eg if you're holding a heavy bag of groceries, opening a door that needs 2 hands is very difficult. Designing for amputees will also help the 99% of the population doing grocery runs.
You’re designing for the interface/usage pattern, not so much a specific disability. A curb cut is a usage pattern for anything with wheels. A greyscale mode is a usage pattern for anyone that wants/needs information conveyed without relying on colour distinctions.
Tons of those adaptions are just plain useful in cases outside disability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_paving
Anecdotally, I've observed that elderly people with grocery carts and people in wheel chairs have difficulty at cross walks navigating these features. The wiki mentions these points:
"...more thought should have been put into balancing the needs of vision-impaired pedestrians and mobility-impaired pedestrians, such as wheelchair and cane users, who can trip on the bumps."
I keep:
- a carefully curated list of high-quality channels on youtube (on newpipe, so no tracking and no echo chamber personalised recommendations)
- a carefully curated list of high-quality subreddits
- hackernews
And that's it. Just cut off the junk, grayscale wont save you
I tried grayscale, but it ended up being too dramatic.
> - a carefully curated list of high-quality subreddits
> - hackernews
So you're not removing all social media from your phone?
And I guess not having color for videos is maybe the point, but I can't manage to use it at all if I can't watch videos with color.
Currently, I've got it set to put a reddish-orange cast on the screen - like a "turbo night shift" more similar to the depth F.lux will let you take your mac. You can use the Shortcuts app to create a shortcut to enable the filter, and then set that to turn on at certain points, so around 10 at night my phone goes from normal night shift to a much more aggressive red/orange-shifted profile. The effect at night is dramatic - the phone becomes much less jarring to look at. The OLED screens are great for this, too - a reduction in blue color is a reduction in blue light. The shortcut turns itself back off at 6am.
The other filter you can apply is a black & white filter, which removes all color from the screen. Give this a try for an hour and then turn it off - you'll be amazed at the riot of attention-grabbing color app makers are throwing at you. I've found it's a lot easier not to get sucked into the phone hole when the UI is set to black & white - the whole device feels calmer and less urgent.
If you haven't spent time in the accessibility settings, though, go exploring. It's where Apple puts all the good stuff.