After Apple rejections, FlickType provides up on widespread iPhone keyboard for the blind

If you’re a blind or low-vision iPhone person who depends on the FlickType keyboard to kind, I’ve obtained some unhealthy information — you’re about to grow to be a casualty of the struggle between Apple and one among its staunchest critics. Developer Kosta Eleftheriou has introduced that he’s discontinuing the iPhone keyboard portion of his app, and says that keyboard will routinely be eliminated in a future replace.

You may need heard the whole app goes away, and that’s not really true, Eleftheriou tells The Verge. In January 2020, he added a swipe-to-type Apple Watch keyboard to FlickType that noticed the app skyrocket to the primary paid app in the whole Apple App Store for a time, and that app will live on and proceed to comprise that Apple Watch keyboard. Eleftheriou says the app has almost half one million downloads, however he doesn’t have a breakdown for what number of of these customers depend on the iPhone keyboard particularly.

If his title sounds acquainted, that’s as a result of Eleftheriou is similar developer who’s been poking holes in Apple’s App Store picture for months, declaring how egregious scams, secret playing dens, and evaluation fraud maintain making it by means of the corporate’s filters regardless that they’re fairly simple for anybody to root out. His struggle turned private lengthy earlier than immediately: he sued Apple in March for some seemingly shady habits, alleging that Apple erected roadblocks to his FlickType keyboard with the intention to persuade him to promote the expertise to Apple for a reduction, all whereas scammy cellular keyboard apps flourished on the App Store.

Now, says Eleftheriou, Apple has instantly determined to reject FlickType but once more — and for a motive that he’s already efficiently argued with them up to now. He shared the rejection letter with The Verge, and it’s a fairly easy dispute: Apple says the keyboard must work even when a person doesn’t give it “full access” to community entry and different iOS options. But Eleftheriou says that if Apple really tried to make use of the app, or consulted their earlier discussions, they’d see that the keyboard works.

To be clear, Apple’s own developer guidelines specify that “full access” isn’t an issue: the one dispute right here is whether or not the app continues to work if a person turns it off — which it does, says Eleftheriou, when you flip VoiceOver on. “They’d have to try it as a VoiceOver user, something that they don’t seem to bother doing. I’ve had several rejections in the past because the reviewer didn’t know anything about VoiceOver,” Eleftheriou says.

As his Twitter thread explains, Eleftheriou sees this as the ultimate straw for this particular characteristic:

“Our rejection history already spans more than FOURTY pages filled with repeated, unwarranted, & unreasonable rejections that serve to frustrate & delay rather than benefit end-users. And dealing with App Review isn’t just time-consuming. It’s also very emotionally draining,” he writes.

Eleftheriou stops wanting accusing Apple of retaliation, in a separate chat over Twitter DM. “I can only speculate about this rejection, but I’ve recently had many more rejections I haven’t talked about yet, and them ignoring my attempts to reach them is also new,” he says.

“I can’t really know, but definitely feels like some kind of ‘special’ treatment going on,” he tells The Verge.

Apple didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.