Accessibility: Drag and Drop

When Apple unveiled iOS 11 and its new Drag and Drop system, we were incredibly energized and embraced it as fully as we could. We thought (and continue to think) that these gestures help make common tasks far easier, quicker, and more natural.

For some, though, Drag and Drop can get in the way. Users with mobility issues and others who simply find the gestures to be uncomfortable may prefer to disable them entirely. While iOS offers no help in this regard, our latest updates include a new accessibility setting that prevents forScore from offering drag targets in most views. You can still drop things like PDF files into forScore to import them, but other interactions will be more like they were in iOS 10 and earlier.

The most notable of these interactions is setlist reordering: with Drag and Drop disabled, tapping the “Edit” button in many list views shows the reorder controls on the right-hand side of each item (the three horizontal lines). Drag these up or down to reposition an item, no need to tap and hold.

One other big change caused by the introduction of Drag and Drop pertains to Quick Peek, the ability to preview items in many of forScore’s menus before you select them. With Drag and Drop enabled you’ll need to tap and hold with two fingers to see the preview; with it disabled you only need to use one finger. (Swiping from left to right over the item still shows the “Peek” option which is unaffected by this accessibility setting.)

We think Drag and Drop is amazing and helps a lot of people, and we also know it’s not for everyone. It’s surprising that Apple hasn’t included a system-wide option to disable them, but until they do we think this will really help.