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The update replaces solid backgrounds with glass-like layers that refract background content at the edges.

Button background automatically changes colour to match whatever is behind them.

UI elements collapsing into themselves fluidly and disappearing into the margins, hiding some of the buttons and leaving more screen real-estate for content.

As designers and techies, this definitely tickles our curiosity on how they achieved such life-like refractive “glass” and fluid interaction, Well done! Impressive craftsmanship.

BUT! As product people, we have to ask: what about accessibility? 

With transparent glass replacing solid backgrounds, making text on those glass backgrounds hard to read – especially for the visually impaired. 

Hiding UI in the margins so you can focus on content is great, but the new design offers no hint on how to get it back. Getting it back requires a scroll or swipe, something you just kinda have to know. 

Fluid animations - and they are honestly gorgeously crafted – reduce some of the immediacy that you want out of a switch or button: now we have to wait for the animation to finish before moving on. 

We can appreciate the step Apple is taking towards a future where interfaces and reality are more seamlessly integrated (think Augmented and Virtual Reality) and the level of crafting that went into achieving the level of detail deserves recognition. 

But if you want to create digital products that augment reality, make it more accessible by borrowing from real life, not less! 

Like how in real life buttons look like they’re meant to be pressed (where glass doesn’t), or how in real life doors don’t disappear dynamically, so you always know where to go. 

Apple's Liquid Glass is impressive craftsmanship, bravo, but it needs some work to regain the accessibility it lost.

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