Friday, 22 June 2012

How to Toggle Assistive Touch on iPad 2

iPad 2 comes along with a little known function called Assistive Touch, which is basically a shortcut icon (displayed as a white circle in a small transluscent black box at the side of the iPad 2 screen) that pops up when selected to allows 1 finger touches to replace more complex finger gestures. These gestures are shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Assistive Touch 

To toggle this feature on/off, proceed with the following steps.

1. Go to Settings from the Home screen.

2. Select the General tab.

3. Scroll down and select the Accessibility tab. Note: the Accessibility tab is located near the bottom of the General tab options and is easily overlooked.

4. Toggle the Assistive Touch tab to show or hide the Assistive Touch icon.

This function was implemented by Apple to make browsing easier for users with disabilities that prevent them from making complex finger gestures. However, in recent months, it was discovered that selecting Home from the Assistive Touch icon instead of pressing the external Home button (resembles a square button in a circular indent) at the bottom of the iPad 2 significantly prolonged the lifespan of the iPad 2's external Home button. It is still unclear whether the external Home button malfunction in most Apple gadgets (iPad, iPad 2, iPhone, iPod Touch etc.) is due to hardware or software problems. But better to be safe than sorry, right?

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