Color me Skeptical over The Altman × Ive Merger

The New York Times reported on Wednesday OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, is acquiring Jony Ive’s startup, called IO, for the astronomical sum of $6.5 billion. As part of the deal, Ive will assume total creative control over design at OpenAI—hardware and software. The acquisition was celebrated with a flowery announcement that included a 9-minute video featuring commentary from both Altman and Ive on their grand new partnership.

At a high level, I have three big takeaways from the Altman-Ive collaboration:

1. I think the folks saying this a harbinger of Apple’s irrelevancy doth protest way too much. Monetarily alone, Apple is nowhere remotely in danger of becoming passé.

2. I think two wealthy, white, abled men waxing romantic about living in San Francisco, let alone building technology to empower people, feels really pompous.

3. I think people generally really like screens—and especially their iPhones—and don’t foresee a clamor to buy whatever it is whenever it starts shipping.

It, of course, is a reference to the prototype device Altman and Ive speak about in the aforementioned video, with Altman saying in part he believes “it is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.” The Wall Street Journal reports Altman told OpenAI workers the forthcoming product is “a third core device” between one’s iPhone and MacBook. What’s more, supply chain whisperer Ming Chi-Kuo posted on X he believes the device is slated to enter mass production in 2027, with its form factor “as compact and elegant as an iPod Shuffle” and meant to be worn around the neck.

Given Kuo’s information, I have three more takeaways:

1. OpenAI’s device seems like it’ll eschew a screen, adopting a voice-first UI.

2. Design notwithstanding, this feels awfully akin to Humane’s failed AI Pin.

3. This thing better support accessibility features.

No. 3 is obviously most crucial from my perspective, both as a journalist and as a user. Readers of my old Forbes column may recall I wasn’t kind to Humane co-founders Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno about what I characterized as their company’s “lack of clarity” over the accessibleness of its AI Pin. I tried vainly in the last couple years, several times in fact, to get Bongiorno, Humane’s CEO, to speak with me on the record about the product’s accessibility to disabled people like me. I got no response.

You can understand my concern here; I worry Altman and Ive’s fancy new bauble will prove inaccessible too. To its credit, OpenAI has been far more transparent in its support for accessibility, evidenced by its work with Be My Eyes and the work of its software engineering teams to make the mobile app accessible. Nonetheless, accessibility is a master shapeshifter and takes many forms. There are a lot of unanswered questions. If the prototype indeed is voice-centric, how does it accommodate those with non-standard speech or who are nonverbal altogether? If the prototype indeed is neck-worn, how easily does it clasp in terms of fine-motor skills? For those with sensory integration disabilities, how heavy is it? What kind of firmware does the device run? Apple surely isn’t licensing iOS, so is whatever OpenAI’s using under the proverbial hood built with accessibility in mind? These all are mission critical questions that the social media peanut gallery has thus far (predictably) ignored in their zeal to celebrate, and pontificate, over Altman and Ive announcing their joint venture.

I don’t mean to imply Altman and Ive are unfeeling, although I maintain the aura of the introductory video reeks of pretentiousness and an utter lack of self-awareness of each other’s immense privilege. Maybe my worries are misplaced… maybe OpenAI’s so-called “family of devices” will be accessible to all. But therein lies the rub: nobody knows. This is exactly the reason for the disabled community’s general apprehension towards new technology. I felt this way in 2023 about Apple Vision Pro, albeit buoyed by Apple’s proven track record in the accessibility arena. The disabled community are technologists at heart, as Dr. Victor Pineda said to me, but we also realize we are the minorities’ minority. As such, we’re naturally skeptical the abled powers-that-be will be mindful that building technology for ostensibly everyone to feel empowered—as Altman and Ive do in their video—in actuality should include people with disabilities.

I’ve neither met nor interviewed Altman. The same goes for Ive. I’d love to interview both of them, ideally simultaneously, and pepper them with the very questions I’ve laid out in this piece. Covering technology is unlike covering, say, the president as a member of the White House press corps. My friends such as CNN’s Alayna Treene absolutely are upholding the journalistic value of holding power to account because what an administration does obviously has enormous effect on the everyday lives of the citizenry. The stakes in tech journalism are markedly lower, but the journalistic value remains unchanged. In my case, I like to think my work is holding truth to power by questioning (and thus reporting on) whether a device like Altman and Ive’s will be accessible to those who need accessibility for usability. In other words, OpenAI ought to be held accountable for ensuring “everyone” is much more practice than platitude.

I’m happy to Waymo myself across town anytime to find out firsthand.

How AI Makes Coding More Accessible

Popular tech YouTuber Quinn Nelson of Snazzy Labs fame posted this on X recently:

I’m not the biggest AI/LLM guy in the world, but I did use Google Gemini to remake my email signature in HTML entirely by explaining in plain English how I wanted it to look. It even fetched all svg icons. Took 5 minutes. Pretty amazing! pic.twitter.com/DIlEI0o5zz

— Quinn Nelson (@SnazzyLabs) May 17, 2025

Nelson’s sentiments struck a chord because he and I feel similarly about artificial intelligence and coding. As I’ve built out Curb Cuts, refining and tweaking its design, I’ve leaned on some custom CSS code to do things the otherwise robust tools Squarespace provides doesn’t allow. These are reflected in things like the tagline in the site’s header, as well as the title casing in the archives. I’m no web developer, so I’m not fluent in HTML or CSS; I know the building blocks, but admittedly need help doing anything requiring heavier lifting. This is where Nelson’s comment on AI and coding is relevant, as I used Google Gemini to help me with generating the CSS code I wanted.

Using Gemini in this way is genius from an accessibility standpoint. For one thing, typing up a quick description of what I need for Gemini is far more accessible than using Google proper to manually search for solutions. In my case, it isn’t so much that I can’t use Google to find a Reddit thread or GitHub repository with what I need; I certainly can, but it comes at a cost: namely, it saps a lot of energy from my eyes and hands from all the scanning and typing. Eye strain and fatigue is more prevalent for me as someone with low vision, since obviously my eyes need to work harder in order to see stuff on my computer—and that’s with accessibility features like Hover Text enabled on my iMac. Likewise, the partial paralysis on the right side of my body, caused by cerebral palsy, makes it that I’m decidedly not a touch typist. I’m more of a hunt-and-peck typist, which means I naturally must be looking at the keyboard to find the letter(s) I want to press.

A chatbot like Gemini is, again, worth its weight in gold given this context. All I need to do is cobble together a sentence or two with what I want to accomplish and send Gemini my prompt. Within a few seconds, it spits out the requested code and, in a nice fit of user interface design, a handy little “Copy Code” button in the top-right corner of the chat window. What’s more, there’s a bonus accessibility win: rather than doing the ⌘-C/V shuffle with my fingers, I instead click the aforementioned “Copy Code” control and easily paste it into my site’s CMS. No muss, no fuss. From a cognition perspective, Gemini’s assistance here has the potential to be even more profound for those who are neurodiverse or cope with other intellectual conditions. A person with a cognitive disability, who may not be able to search Google or write code without being overwhelmed by the how, what, and where involved in such tasks, may find tools like Gemini (or ChatGPT or whatever) invaluable to, in this case, building a website or doing research for various projects. This isn’t conjecture on my part; Jenny Lay-Flurrie, vice president and chief accessibility officer at Microsoft, told me in an interview last year about her teenage daughter, who’s neurodivergent, using the ChatGPT-powered Bing to do research for school essays because it’s more accessible. There surely are other examples, but the salient point is, whether for coding or something else, AI chatbots are bonafide assistive technologies for legions of people in the disability community. All the handwringing over chatbots in classrooms, what with concerns over cheating and an existential threat to pedagogy, fail—predictably so—to see not every student (or teacher) uses these AI tools out of sheer laziness or, more nefariously, a crave to cheat.

So it goes with software development. Whether a blog or iOS development in Xcode, using AI tools to generate code is not merely convenient or expedient—it makes coding downright more accessible too. That’s not at all trivial, especially if you’re an aspiring developer who copes with a disability of some sort that makes writing code difficult.

Speaking of code, while I’m not well-versed in HTML or CSS, I am versed in Markdown. With few exception, everything I write for the internet is written using Markdown—including this very article. I wrote about Markdown and accessibility for TidBITS a little over 12 years ago (!) now. What I wrote in June 2013 stands equally strong in May 2025.

“Markdown has changed my life for the better. Not only is it easier to work with than graphical interfaces given the limitations of my vision, but it has caused me to embrace plain text for nearly all of my documents. No longer do I have to work in bloated word processors with toolbars galore, or worry about rich-text formatting. Discovering Markdown has been liberating in the truest sense of the word,” I wrote of the syntax’s (lasting) influence on my writing. “Given Markdown’s nature, I came to the realization that it, however unintentionally, is in fact a wonderful accessibility tool, because it reduces eye strain while writing. The simplicity of Markdown’s syntax makes it possible to not have to look at the screen every time I want to italicize a word or insert a link.”

It was thrilling, soaking wet behind the ears as I was, to read I made John Gruber’s day.

“Vibe coding” is en vogue right now in the software development space. For me, it isn’t for the reason most assume. In my case, it’s accessibility—which is a vibe all its own.

Microsoft, Xbox Mark GAAD with Updates

In celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day last week, Redmond-based Microsoft shared a bunch of updates on the continued work it’s doing to amplify awareness of the disability community. The company’s vice president and chief accessibility officer, Jenny Lay-Flurrie, wrote about this in a blog post. The thrust of her piece is the technology du jour in artificial intelligence and how it impacts accessibility.

“Today we celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) and work across the industry to make technology easier for everyone. At Microsoft, our journey with accessibility started in the 90’s, and is a cornerstone to our mission. We are committed to engraining accessibility into our culture, to build for all, and innovate to empower people around the world,” Flurrie said in the post’s introduction. “AI has been a game changer for accessibility. It is accelerating the accessibility journey in exciting ways. Making it easier to do everyday tasks and tackling some of the toughest problems of our times. Launching some new technologies and partnerships today. Let’s dig in!”

Flurrie’s first point highlights how disability-centric data “unlocks new opportunities for AI,” adding “high-quality and representative data can lead to more reliable outcomes from trustworthy AI systems.” She goes on to say Microsoft is “proud” to support two projects that are using disability-focused data to “drive change.” One is the Disability Data Hub run by World Bank Group, which Flurrie describes as “the first open data initiative to provide disability-disaggregated development data across 63 global economies [which] addresses the need for a single, comprehensive global dashboard to close data gaps that have historically excluded disabled individuals from development agendas.” Another is Answer ALS and ALS Therapy Development Institute, who’s working on finding a cure and therapies for ALS, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Elsewhere, Flurrie writes about the importance of authentic disability representation in AI systems. “One of the most pressing challenges is that generated content, such as images, can misrepresent or stereotype disability, leading to harmful inaccuracies or even the exclusion of certain identities,” she said. “These gaps in representation data can reinforce bias and erode trust.” Flurries notes Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator now is capable of generating “more accurate depictions of disabilities” such as autism and Down syndrome. Microsoft, Flurrie went on to say, “collaborated with individuals with lived experience, trusted external partners, and AI researchers to better understand how disability is portrayed—both accurately and not—within AI models.”

Lastly, Flurrie mentions a few software enhancements that make products like Microsoft 365 more accessible to disabled people. For instance, the Accessibility Assistant is available in the Microsoft 365 web apps, as well as in Visio and OneNote.

In other news, Microsoft-owned Xbox last week announced updates which “[welcome] more players by increasing accessibility in games.” There are “new and exciting accessibility features” in titles such as DOOM: The Dark Ages, Candy Crush Soda Saga, and World of Warcraft. The company also shared news of its work in building the Accessible Games Initiative (AGI), as well as an accessibility-minded peripheral, the Xbox Adaptive Joystick, being available to buy. As to the AGI, I covered it back in early April with an interview with Entertainment Software Association SVP Aubrey Quinn.

Slack Gives Shoutout to Simplified Layout Mode

Last Thursday, Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I was alerted to this X post by Slack:

Ever wish things were just a littler simpler? Cleaner? 😣

We hear you, friends. Introducing simplified layout mode in Slack! ✨

Designed with assistive tech users and neurodivergent colleagues in mind, it offers all the same functionality of Slack with a streamlined interface… pic.twitter.com/3z7gLVSCHo

— Slack (@SlackHQ) May 15, 2025

The post links to this page on Slack’s website wherein the Salesforce-owned company details its Simplified Layout mode in its desktop app. As Slack’s post says, the streamlined mode has been built with accessibility in mind—particularly helpful to those who are neurodivergent or cope with intellectual conditions affecting cognition.

“Simplified layout mode for the Slack desktop app helps you focus by showing one section of Slack at a time,” Slack writes about Simplified Layout on its website. “This mode provides simplified layouts and minimizes distractions, which may benefit single-taskers and people using assistive technology.”

In broad strokes, what Slack is doing here is neither novel nor revolutionary. Even for people without disabilities, the Slack user interface, whether on the desktop or on the web, can be inscrutable and incongruous at times. Companies such as Apple, what with its Assistive Access feature on iOS, have rightly recognized there exists a subset of users for whom their ostensibly “simple” UI paradigms remain complex and out of reach in terms of comprehensibility. Hence, that tools like Assistive Access—or, in this case, Slack’s Simplified Layout—have cropped up in the last few years is a conscious choice by platform owners to remedy the inaccessibility for a portion, however tiny it may be in absolute number, by stripping down its software to make it even more conceptually simpler. It’s also worth noting this particular nod to inclusivity is a prime example of accessibility’s return on investment being immaterial; to wit, companies like Apple and Slack care not about the financial coats it incurs to allocate resources to building something like Simplified Layout. It’s obvious the target demographic for the functionality is a fraction of the fraction who use accessibility software, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is something like Simplified Layout (or Assistive Access) worthwhile because it diversifies the platform even further by providing a service to those who can truly benefit from it. Put another way, tools like Simplified Layout exemplify what GAAD co-founder Joe Devon recently told me about why accessibility awareness is so crucial: it’s not only good for users, it’s also good for business. The more flexible and richer one’s product is, the more users one attracts—and the disability community comprises a lot of potential users to which companies can cater.

Assistive Access, by the way, is coming “later this year” to Apple’s TV app.

Google Celebrates GAAD With New Enhancements to TalkBack, Expressive Captions, More

Google marked this year’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day late last week by publishing a blog post wherein the Mountain View-based company announced numerous accessibility-oriented updates for its myriad platforms. The post was written by Angana Ghosh, who’s Google’s director of product management for Android.

“Advances in AI continue to make our world more and more accessible,” Ghosh wrote in the post’s introduction. “Today, in honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we’re rolling out new updates to our products across Android and Chrome, as well as adding new resources for developers building speech recognition tools.”

Ghosh’s post begins by discussing “more AI-powered innovation with Android,” with Google’s screen reader, known as TalkBack, getting expanded Gemini integration such that users can ask the chatbot about imagery and get answers. Ghosh cites an example of a Blind user asking about a picture of a friend’s guitar, writing the user can ask for details about the musical instrument such as its color and manufacturer. Likewise, users also are able to query Gemini about product sales in their favorite shopping app(s) so they can be more informed about discounts and their overall buying power.

Google first brought Gemini to TalkBack last year, according to Ghosh.

Elsewhere, Expressive Captions, which uses AI to not only telegraph what people say but how they say it, is being updated such that Deaf and hard-of-hearing people can “understand mooooore of the emotion behind captions.” Ghosh notes Google has added a new “duration” feature to Expressive Captions that’s useful for times when, for instance, a sports announcer excitedly boasting about an “amaaazing shot” during a game. What’s more, there are new labels for sounds like whistling or throat-clearing. The updated version is available on devices running Android 15 or higher, with localization in English in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In other news, Ghosh writes Google has expanded availability of its Project Euphonia, announced in 2019 as a way to make speech recognition more accessible for those who have non-standard speech pattern (like yours truly). Google is making its own-source codebase available of the Project’s GitHub repo, as well as working with the University College London’s Centre for Digital Language Inclusion to strengthen speech recognition technology for non-English speakers in Africa. On the educational front, Google announced accessibility improvements to ChromeOS and the Chrome web browser, including more accessible PDF reading and page-zooming functionality.

I interviewed Ghosh back in December about building Expressive Captions.

New Video shows magnifier for Mac In Action

In complementing its Music Haptics video, Apple earlier this week posted a video to its YouTube channel which demonstrates the forthcoming Magnifier for Mac app in use. The software is a headliner amongst the slew of accessibility-focused enhancements the company previewed as part of its Global Accessibility Awareness Day celebration.

The Magnifier for Mac video, embedded here, shows a student using it during a lecture.

The quick glimpses of the new-to-macOS Magnifier app reveal the software to be quite robust. At a technical level, it’s also abundantly clear Apple took the building blocks for Continuity Camera to assemble Magnifier for Mac. I’m excited to try it out for myself on my M2 MacBook Air, but do wonder about clipping my iPhone to the laptop’s display. Will Apple be selling a first-party mount? My guess is no, considering the company already sells a Belkin-branded mount for Mac notebooks. There’s a similar accessory for Apple TV 4K to use for FaceTime calls. Whatever the case, it’ll be interesting to see how accessible these mounts are to manipulate, motor-wise. It’s important people realize not everyone can attach their phone to the mount, then to a display, so easily.

The moral is Magnifier for Mac has a multi-layered accessibility story that goes beyond sheer software. The app seems eminently capable, but is usable only if the mount is too.

On App Store Economics and Accessibility

I came across a post on Daring Fireball yesterday, written by my friend John Gruber, in which he links to a RevenueCat piece which reports the results of a test comparing conversion rates for App Store in-app purchases (IAP) versus outside web checkout. RevenueCat’s test used the same app for its experiment, comprising 5,600 users.

The big takeaway from RevenueCat’s testing is right there in the lede: “Turns out, in-app purchases are good for conversion rates. In fact, at least 30% better,” writes Jacob Eiting. Eiting explains the impetus came from the court order from earlier this month compelling Apple to allow customers in the United States to be alerted to external payment methods available outside of the App Store’s virtual walls. As Eiting notes, the ruling is of great import because it allows software developers to avoid Apple taking its 30% cut of all IAP transactions. Put another way, the recent ruling means Apple isn’t getting a considerable amount of money to line its already considerably large coffers.

The company said it plans to appeal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ decision.

As Gruber notes in his commentarial blurb, RevenueCat found through its testing the initial IAP conversion rate was approximately 28%, whereas the rate through the web flow was only 18%. Like Gruber said, that 10% represents a precipitous drop-off.

What inspired me to write this piece lies in his comments on the study.

“I don’t find it surprising at all though,” Gruber said. “[In-app purchase] really is more convenient. Apple’s built a great system, and they don’t need exclusivity to keep users preferring it, and thus keep developers using it.”

Ah, convenience. Gruber is undoubtedly correct when he says Apple’s IAP functionality is easy and convenient; it is truly more alluring to pay for something within an app than be kicked to a website. As I’ve argued innumerable times, however, convenience and accessibility, however close cousins they are, are not interchangeable concepts. They’re different words for a reason: they connote different meanings. For Gruber and others, in-app purchases indeed may be convenient; for others—namely disabled people—in-app purchases may be a de-facto accessibility feature that makes buying something more inclusive by being less of a barrier. See also: Apple Pay. For all the Apple community’s handwringing over this in-app purchase topic, the accessibility ramifications of Apple’s mechanism go (predictably) overlooked and undervalued.

I’m not here to rehash Apple’s hand in App Store economics. At a philosophical level, I agree Apple should let developers inform users of their options, and I believe most people—including many with disabilities—aren’t buying the notion that buying things on the web is the big, scary boogeyman Apple wants users to believe it is. And I understand no one has said Apple’s IAP system is bad in and of itself. My main point is simply that, as a practical matter, using Apple’s IAP system is arguably far more accessible for a not-insignificant number of people with disabilities. In this context, the economical aspects are irrelevant; I’d venture to say people just want to buy what they want and focus their attention on more important things in their lives. Again, I believe in transparency and consumer choice, but nonetheless think it’s not remarked upon often enough how genius the IAP system is for simplicity’s sake. Likewise for alternative app stores. There a lot of people, particularly in the European Union, who want to be able to install iOS (and iPadOS) software from anywhere, akin to how the Mac works. Hell, I do it myself; the text editor I’m writing these very words in, called MarkEdit, lives on GitHub and updates must be installed from there, with new versions needing to be manually moved from Downloads to the Applications folder. It’s not rocket science in an absolute sense, but does involve some technical know-how and is far less seamless than were I to use the Mac App Store. But I’m an avowed nerd, so I do it and it’s fine. But I don’t represent everyone; not everyone wants to, or can, download software from the internet. There are real considerations around cognition and motor skills that must be taken into account. For these people, outlets like the App Store, whether on an iPhone or an iMac, can be literal technological lifesavers. That is not at all a trivial matter.

Even if one isn’t disabled, I believe Eiting and team’s data is pretty clear: most people like Apple’s IAP. As Gruber said, to use it means one has a fast, efficient way to buy things. And I’m here to say accessibility is a meaningful component of that flow as well.

Netflix Reemphasizes ‘Commitment to making Entertainment More Accessible’ in GAAD blog post

For Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Netflix on Thursday published a blog post in which director of product accessibility Heather Dowdy reflects upon “a year of progress in accessibility” at the company. The executive, herself a fellow CODA, stresses the streaming giant is steadfastly committed to “making entertainment more accessible and celebrating the community of Netflix members who use these features every day.”

Dowdy’s words are laudatory in tone, with her boasting about the Bay Area-based company’s many achievements in accentuating the accessibility of its platform. Dowdy mentions the recent accessibility-centric enhancements—experiential improvements which, while obviously welcome, pale in comparison to the forthcoming redesign that will subsume said accessibility features. Moreover, Dowdy noted the company supported a workshop during which writers in the United States received trained on making good audio descriptions; such a move, she wrote, demonstrates an understanding of “the importance of not just developing features but also growing expertise.” This is essential work, Dowdy added, because quality audio descriptions are crucial for many in the Blind and low vision community to maximally enjoy movies and television shows on Netflix—or any other streaming service out there, for that matter.

Elsewhere, Dowdy says a goal of Netflix in the accessibility arena is to not only provide robust software features, but also raise awareness of disability-focused storytelling. To that end, she gives a shoutout to the company’s Amplifying Accessibility Awareness, described as “a collection of series and films that highlight the lives and perspectives of people living with disabilities.” Notably, the Accessibility Awareness collection includes the popular Love on the Spectrum show, about autistic people navigating the complexities of dating and romantic relationships. Olivia Harrison, writing for Netflix’s in-house Tudum publication, reported earlier this week the Emmy-winning documentary series has been renewed for a yet-to-be-announced fourth season. Additionally, Dowdy says Netflix was honored with an Eagle Award at last year’s Disability Rights Advocates Gala. The recognition, she said, was for the company’s “efforts to make entertainment more accessible for all audiences everywhere,” adding “it was humbling to see our progress acknowledged within the community, and a reminder that there’s still more to learn, improve, and celebrate with our members.”

New Video Puts Music Haptics in the Spotlight

Ryan Christoffel reports for 9to5 Mac Apple today has released a new video which shows off its Music Haptics accessibility feature. The 75-second video, embedded below, was posted to the Apple Music YouTube channel, according to Christoffel.

Music Haptics was introduced last year as an accessibility feature new to iOS 18.

“The new video highlights how Music Haptics can help users who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing still experience music in a unique way,” Christoffel writes of its raison d'être.

I wrote about Music Haptics last year, saying in part it has become one of my favorite accessibility features on my iPhone. Take a listen to From Zero, the latest album from my favorite band in Linkin Park—and the first featuring new singer Emily Armstrong—with Music Haptics enabled and you literally feel the hard drums, and Armstrong’s arguably even harder vocals, on a track like “Heavy is the Crown.” While I do have some congenital hearing loss, Music Haptics is ostensibly pointless because I don’t need it. On the contrary, however, I find the feature is lovely for all the ways it enriches my listening experience. To wit, it adds a tactile element to what’s an auditory medium. I don’t use Music Haptics all the time, but when I do, it’s a true pleasure to experience.

As Christoffel rightly notes, Music Haptics makes what’s normally an exclusionary piece of art—music—to those with little-to-no hearing and makes it inclusive by way of haptic feedback. Likewise, the same applies to Apple Podcasts getting transcripts; again, a sound-oriented medium is augmented such that it can be accessible. Moreover, it’s worth mentioning Music Haptics in particular is a quintessential example of the famed interplay of hardware and software that comprises Apple’s bread and butter. They built the so-called Taptic Engine in the iPhone, and they built the Apple Music service (with help from Beats, of course), so it makes sense they’d smush both together to create Music Haptics using its beloved vertical integration. What’s more, there’s a special playlist on Apple Music filled with songs that pair well with the feature.

Apple’s Music Haptics video comes just a couple days after the company celebrated this year’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day by sharing a preview of the new accessibility features coming to its platforms “later this year.” It’s classic Apple to not cop to it just yet, but if history is a guide, these enhancements are obviously going to appear in iOS 19, et al, when the updates are unveiled by the company next month.

GAAD Foundation, ServiceNow Announce AI Model Accessibility Checker API for Software developers

Apropos of today being Global Accessibility Awareness Day, the GAAD Foundation on Thursday announced an AI-powered accessibility checker called the AI Model Accessibility Checker (AIMAC). The tool, described as “[evaluating and comparing] how well coding-focused large language models (LLMs) generate accessible code [by providing] benchmarks for companies to test and demonstrate the accessibility of their models’ output.” AIMAC was developed in collaboration with the folks at ServiceNow.

The GAAD Foundation notes the primary purpose of the project is to “[help] the technology industry drive toward more inclusive standards that can lead to a more accessible world for the 1.3 billion people living with disabilities.”

At a technical level, AIMAC is characterized as “an open-source, extensible evaluation framework” which tests AI models by sending prompts and analyzing the accessibility of the returned HTML code. Furthermore, the GAAD Foundation says the AIMAC API “features fully customizable prompts, making it adaptable to different use cases—from design and layout to semantic structure. The system generates a comparative score to help users identify which models excel at producing accessible code.”

“Accessibility must be a foundational requirement as AI reshapes our digital future,” said GAAD co-founder Joe Devon in a statement for the announcement. "With AI adoption accelerating, there’s a risk of the industry becoming a ‘winner takes all’ space dominated by a handful of companies. If accessibility isn’t prioritized, people with disabilities risk being systematically excluded from AI’s transformative potential. AIMAC helps address this risk by embedding accessibility as a baseline standard in AI innovation. I’m honored to launch this with my friend and longtime collaborator, Eamon McErlean, whose leadership at ServiceNow reflects a deep commitment to accessibility and aligns with GAAD’s mission of building a more accessible digital world.”

For his part, McErlean agreed wholeheartedly with Devon in a statement of his own.

“Accessibility should never be an afterthought. It must be embedded into every phase of the product development lifecycle,” he said. “While the technology industry has made progress, accessibility was an afterthought for far too long. We can’t let history repeat itself with AI. That’s why I’m proud to launch AIMAC with Joe—a trusted advocate, expert, and ServiceNow collaborator—as we join forces to champion inclusive innovation and ensure AI experiences are equitable from the start.”

Devon and McErlean are familiar names. Devon sat down with me earlier this month for an interview about the recent State of Mobile App Accessibility Report, for which he worked with ArcTouch in an advisory capacity. In terms of artificial intelligence, Devon said “it’s too early to tell” if AI will make mobile apps more accessible (or not), but nonetheless did express bullishness on the technology’s potential in assisting the disability community. As to McErlean, who serves as ServiceNow’s vice president and global head of accessibility, spoke with me back in 2023 about digital inclusion and many more topics. Both men are co-hosts of the Accessibility and Gen AI Podcast.

AIMAC is available on the GAAD Foundation’s GitHub repository.

Amazon Shares ‘12 Ways’ It Assists On Accessibility

Amazon this week published a blog post in which it details a dozen ways in which its devices are accessible to disabled people. The Seattle-based company’s post, bylined by Deb Landau, boasts accessibility has been a top priority “for a decade,” and encompasses everything from Alexa to Fire TV to Kindle to Prime Video and more.

“According to the World Health Organization, 16% of all people—one in six of us—currently experience a significant disability. [That] fact is at the heart of Amazon’s approach to designing devices and services like Alexa,” Landau wrote in the lede. “For over a decade, Amazon has worked with and for people with disabilities, including world experts, on disability and accessibility, and advocated for accessible design throughout the company.”

Landau’s post discusses a litany of features, beginning with the doyenne of digital assistants in Alexa. Here, Landau highlights Eye Gaze on Amazon’s Fire tablets, which enables people who can’t use common methods like voice or touch to manipulate their device(s) to instead use their eyes. Similarly, Call Translation and Captioning on something like the Echo Show “allows customers to communicate across languages, but also allows customers customers who are Deaf and hard of hearing to communicate with loved ones, as they get live call captioning,” Landau said. Additionally, Landau mentions the aforementioned Fire tablets also support voice control and third-party switches for those who cope with gross-motor disabilities.

Amazon’s post makes frequent mention of accessibility features of its Fire TV platform, including Dual Audio support for users with hearing aids to more accessibly get sound from their television. I’ve covered Fire TV numerous times in the past, most recently about a year ago when I interviewed Amazon’s Peter Korn, who serves as director of accessibility for devices and services, to discuss the platform’s then-new AI Search functionality. Notably in context of this week’s blog post, Korn said AI Search encapsulates Amazon’s philosophy on accommodating the disability community vis-a-vis accessibility. It may not only be convenient to some—it may be accessible to others.

“It [AI search] really captures the things we do for everyone that may be especially valuable for people with disabilities and things we do for people with disabilities may also valuable for everyone else,” he said to me around this time a year ago. “What’s essential for some may be useful for someone else… like dialogue that’s essential for someone with hearing loss, but any number of times it may be hard in the mix of this particular movie to hear the dialogue or the explosions in an action scene. I view generative AI searching as another example of that.”

As with its contemporaries, Amazon maintains a webpage devoted to accessibility.

TikTok Pledges Its fealty Towards ‘Building an Accessible and Inclusive’ platform in new blog post

In marking this year’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day, TikTok on Wednesday announced the ways in which the company is “[spotlighting] the diverse voices that make TikTok a platform for creativity, self-expression, and community.” Accessibility, TikTok says, isn’t merely a function of design or an ancillary component of its product—it’s “a continued priority as we look to make the TikTok experience positive for everyone, including people with visual, auditory, motor and cognitive differences.”

“We know that when people feel seen, heard, and supported, they’re empowered to share their stories, create and connect with others in meaningful ways,” TikTok wrote. “That’s why we’re focused on continuously building products that serve everyone. We see accessibility not just as a responsibility, but as an opportunity to innovate and foster a more inclusive platform for our global community. This Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we invite you to explore content from creators with disabilities, try accessibility features, and join us in creating a platform that’s truly for all.”

In its mission to “continuously [improve] the TikTok experience to help people create, connect and enjoy content on TikTok,” TikTok used its post to detail the available accessibility features. Chief among them, particularly for such a visual medium like TikTok, is alternative text, colloquially known as alt-text, for photos. The company says it’s testing leveraging artificial intelligence to help users create alt-text, which is read aloud to Blind and low vision users by screen readers such as Apple’s venerable VoiceOver. (Using AI to help generate alt-text is a genius use of the technology, especially for novices who need guidance.) As a practical matter, TikTok writes alt-text is not only worthy for inclusivity’s sake, it’s worthy because “these features improve usability for people who are blind, have low vision, or process content differently.”

Beyond alternative text, TikTok also details the ability to enable increased contrast and bold text, noting both are intended to accommodate for enhanced readability. If alt-text is designed for reading without sight, or little at all, then contrast and bold text do the inverse. And really, increased contrast and bold text go hand-in-hand despite having some nuanced differences in what each feature attempts to accomplish for the user.

“These new features join our existing suite of accessibility tools, including auto-generated captions for videos, dark mode, text-to-speech and thumbnail animation,” TikTok said. “People can find all of these features on the redesigned accessibility settings page on TikTok, which makes it easier for people to navigate our features.”

TikTok concludes its post by highlighting a few popular creators, who have disabilities, on the platform. They include Taylor Lindsay-Noel, Tiffany Yu, and Kaelynn Partlow.

People can learn more about TikTok’s accessibility features on this webpage.

Apple Marks Global Accessibility Awareness Day With Preview of Accessibility Nutrition Labels, Magnifier for Mac, More Forthcoming Features

Ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) later this week, Apple on Tuesday announced what it calls “powerful accessibility features” for its expanse of operating systems. The company says the new software is slated for release “later this year,” but it doesn’t take a Kremlinologist to surmise these looming enhancements are obviously for iOS 19, visionOS 3, et al, when the updates ship in the fall. Notably, the 2025 edition of Apple’s annual GAAD announcement is special: this year marks 40 years that the company has worked on building assistive technologies for its disabled customers.

“At Apple, accessibility is part of our DNA,” Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Making technology for everyone is a priority for all of us, and we’re proud of the innovations we’re sharing this year. That includes tools to help people access crucial information, explore the world around them, and do what they love.”

There are two headliners this year: Accessibility Nutrition Labels and Magnifier for Mac. For the former, the Nutrition Labels are effectively identical to the privacy ones currently available; Apple says the accessibility labels are designed to give users “a new way to learn if an app will be accessible to them before they download it, and give developers the opportunity to better inform and educate their users on features their app supports.” The Accessibility Nutrition Labels will be available on the App Store worldwide, with Apple noting “developers can access more guidance on the criteria apps should meet before displaying accessibility information on their product pages.” As to the latter, the longstanding Magnifier app for iOS and iPadOS is making its way to macOS this year. Its implementation is clear in inspiration, as Apple essentially took the building blocks for Continuity Camera on iOS and tvOS to make Magnifier for Mac. The company boasts the feature will be a boon to people with low vision (like yours truly) to understand the physical world more accessibly. It’s one thing to describe it, but it’s another thing entirely to see it; to that end, Apple has made a video showing a person with albinism using Magnifier for Mac, with their iPhone clipped to their MacBook’s display, taking notes in a college classroom during a lecture. Magnifier for Mac integrates with another new feature this year, called Accessibility Reader, which, with Magnifier, will “[transform] text from the physical world into a custom legible format.”

The coming advent of Accessibility Nutrition Labels is a huge step towards facilitating greater awareness—and accountability—of accessibility and the disability community writ large. It’s a sentiment shared by American Foundation for the Blind president and chief executive officer Eric Bridges, who’s quoted in Apple’s GAAD press release.

“Accessibility Nutrition Labels are a huge step forward for accessibility,” he said in a brief but pointed statement. “Consumers deserve to know if a product or service will be accessible to them from the very start, and Apple has a long-standing history of delivering tools and technologies that allow developers to build experiences for everyone. These labels will give people with disabilities a new way to easily make more informed decisions and make purchases with a new level of confidence.”

Elsewhere, Apple announced Live Captions are coming to Apple Watch, Zoom is coming to Vision Pro, a new Name Recognition feature, and much more. Beyond the forthcoming software updates, the company is also celebrating GAAD with accessibility-oriented material across its plethora of retail and digital properties. For instance, the company has shared a behind-the-scenes look of the new Apple TV+ film Deaf President Now. The documentary, out this Friday, chronicles the 1988 student protests which compelled Gallaudet University to appoint its first-ever Deaf president despite existing for more than 120 years at that point in time. I posted an interview with Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim last week, who told me all about the film and the protests’ deeply-felt cultural significance to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.

My friend Stephen Hackett shared an especially astute, and poignantly so, perspective on today’s accessibility news out of Apple Park. He writes on his 512 Pixels blog “in a timeline where a lot of folks have …complicated… feelings about Apple, seeing the company to continue [improving] access to technology for everyone is still great.”

Apple is neither above criticism nor a monolith. There are plenty like Sarah Herrlinger.

“Building on 40 years of accessibility innovation at Apple, we are dedicated to pushing forward with new accessibility features for all of our products,” Herrlinger said, who serves as the company’s senior director of global accessibility policy and initiatives. “Powered by the Apple ecosystem, these features work seamlessly together to bring users new ways to engage with the things they care about most.”

Somewhat fortuitously, today’s news out of Cupertino is complemented by a report from Rolfe Winkler of The Wall Street Journal that Apple is purportedly hard at work on developing brain-controlled interfaces, or BCIs, to assist people with motor disabilities. In his own story on Winkler’s reporting, 9to5 Mac’s Chance Miller notes researchers believe BCIs have profound potential to “revolutionize” the use of computers by people coping with ALS, for example. Miller also writes Apple is expected to “add broader support for BCIs” to its longstanding Switch Control feature at some point this year.

How ‘RoboGobo’ Puts Limb Loss In the limelight

Back in March, I wrote about the Apple TV+ children’s series Wonder Pets: In the City and interviewed its creator, Jennifer Oxley. As I wrote, the show’s premise chronicles the adventures of a group of classroom pets in a New York City school who, when school is out and night falls, morph into heroes and travel the globe in their “Jetcar” to rescue their fellow animals—all the while singing in operatic style. In a nod to disability inclusion, Oxley told me, amongst other things, two of the show’s characters, a snake and an elephant, cope with limb differences and visual impairments, respectively.

I bring up Wonder Pets: In the City because my mind immediately went to it when I was approached earlier this month about covering RoboGobo. The Disney Jr. series, created by Chris Gilligan and streamable on Disney+, has a similar conceit to Wonder Pets: In the City insofar as it’s about a group of heroes—some of them coping with disabilities—banding together to solve problems using robotics. Disney describes RoboGobo as “superheroes who fight villains and rescue pets in peril,” led by boy genius Dax. Disney seemingly has the copyright cornered on “the rescue pets who rescue pets” slogan for RoboGobo, but it’d befit Oxley’s Wonder Pets crew just as aptly in a conceptual sense.

“We were working from this notion that aspirational heroes can come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and abilities,” Gilligan said about RoboGobo in a recent interview with me done via videoconference. “The decision to give [Dax] a limb difference was organic. It was one of these things like, ‘Why not?’ Why wait for a specific episode to introduce a character with disability? Why not have the protagonist be [disabled]? It just felt right for the story. It also felt like something that hadn’t been explored before in a way I was looking to do with this show. The possibilities are exciting as a result of that [choice].”

Dr. Nava Silton, a psychology professor at Marymount Manhattan College who worked on RoboGobo, explained she “really loves” how the show’s central figure, the aforementioned Dax, has a limb difference. That the main protagonist has a disability, she added, is “such a boon for representation” because more often that not, characters with disabilities are relegated to ancillary status in terms of storylines and general visibility. Dax being the focal point of RoboGobo, Dr. Silton said, is of crucial import precisely because it bucks convention; Disney was highly intentional in not only using sensitive language, but in its pursuit to ensure authenticity regarding the look and feel of Dax’s prosthetic arm. Even the stump and, impressively, gait of Joe the Jaguar was considered in an episode, “Jumpin’ Jaguar,” where he’s scared to get down from a tree.

“I thought all those things were really special with this particular series,” Dr. Silton said.

Piggybacking on Dr. Silton’s sentiments, Gilligan explained to me the creative team went so far as to source footage of actual jaguars living with limb differences in order to animate their physical traits and movements properly for the show. They found one of a cub, which matches up demographically with Joe’s character, with Gilligan saying “we made sure we got that all right… all those specific [details],” he said. “We always checked to make sure ‘Are we doing this right? Are we representing this correctly?’”

“It was done in such a nice, comprehensive, and sensitive way,” Dr. Silton added.

Dr. Silton prepared a 2-hour educational presentation on limb difference for roughly 18–20 people in advance of production. She said “they all sat there and paid attention” to the myriad ways people use prosthetics, and which situations demand which tools. Attendees, she said, “asked such insightful questions” and she consulted with Gilligan extensively throughout the production process. It was a definite imperative for Dr. Silton and team to especially get Dax’s prosthetic arm as correct as possible; the primary goal was to make it “look as much like a prosthetic, but also something toyetic that can be used in terms of consumer products or those types of things,” she said.

Dr. Silton continued: “[We tried] to ensure we could have a powerful story while also representing the authenticity of limb difference and to model sensitivity for typically-developing individuals or others who might know a bit less about limb difference.”

For his part, Gilligan heaped praised unto Dr. Silton, telling me the team feels “very lucky” to work with her. She not only is a subject matter expert, he said, she’s a “storyteller and creative person.” Moreover, Gilligan emphasized that while the representational aspect to RoboGobo is a focal point, so too is remembering the essence of the show’s existence lies in its entertainment value. He recounted being inspired by something he read in a 2010 National Geographic piece about prostheses and neural impulses. (The latest episode of 60 Minutes features a similarly fascinating story from Anderson Cooper.) According to Gilligan, he wanted to “do something interesting like that” in RoboGobo and cited Dax’s prosthetic having a flip-up mechanism for shooting his robo-discs as a manifestation of said desire. All told, Gilligan called these creative elements the end result of deep collaboration between innumerable people; it was work that put the team in “a great place”—and uniquely so.

"it was special… it took wonderful teamwork,” Dr. Silton said of the efforts.

When asked about corporate support, Gilligan told me Disney has been “1000% supportive” of himself and the rest of the RoboGobo team. He said the company’s been “extremely excited” about the show, adding “I think [Disney] loved the initial thinking from the get-go… along the entire journey, they’ve been nothing but supportive of us.”

“They’re into it,” Gilligan said glibly of Disney’s reaction towards RoboGobo.

Of course there’s an entertainment element to it, but Gilligan and Dr. Silton told me they hope RoboGobo carries with it an undercurrents of the importance of empathy, perseverance, and open-mindedness, messaging-wise. They want children—and their families—to see everyone is literally built differently, with Dr. Silton wanting audiences to “not be afraid” of the challenges they are faced with in life. Such an idea sits at the core of Dax’s outlook on life and in the messaging he tries to convey to his cohorts.

“We wanted to develop empathy,” Gilligan said.

Beyond Disney, the response to RoboGobo has been positive. Dr. Silton said the most striking piece of feedback has to do with people expressing gratitude for putting disability at the forefront instead of obscuring it. She also pointed to children role-playing Dax during pretend play and using various props for his prosthetic, which not only illustrates empathy but something Dr. Silton found “extremely heartwarming.” She recalled having a conversation with some children about the “Take a Leap and Try” song and what it means to them. The engaging responses from the young children, Dr. Silton told me, “was such a wonderful way to start an exciting conversation about all of us coming into the world with strengths and challenges and, no matter what we have, we all have that opportunity to try and reach our goals, even if they’re hard [and] even if they’re difficult. It was an exciting jumping-off point for a wonderful conversation.”

“Whether individuals with limb differences or typically-developing—or hopefully both—I think everyone’s getting something special [by watching RoboGobo],” Dr. Silton said.

As to the future, Gilligan and Dr. Silton expressed similar sentiments about being proud of the work each as put into making RoboGobo a reality. Both are especially proud of the representational gains, with both saying they want to keep the show going as long as possible and keep telling more stories. The future is bright with possibility for Dax and friends—with Dr. Silton saying she would love a movie version to happen someday.

“[RoboGobo] sets the stage beautifully to show the world that you don’t just have to break that it’s not only incorporating disability into your show—it’s about making it the the main protagonist present with that disability,” Dr. Silton said of the show’s impact on viewers. “[The character] could really be an incredible anchor for a wonderful show—a show that really has tremendous take-home [lessons] for kids and adults alike.”

Upcoming ‘Deaf President now’ Movie Offers Poignant ‘Snapshot’ of Deaf history, culture

When I asked Nyle DiMarco to share his thoughts on the forthcoming Apple TV+ documentary Deaf President Now in an interview earlier this week, the film’s producer didn’t shy away from exulting its deep cultural resonance to Deaf people everywhere.

“This [event] really is one of the most important civil rights movements of our time, and we definitely don’t want to let this critical history be erased,” DiMarco said. “This is something everyone should know about, and I think the idea of the film is to inspire a younger generation—the teens of today—to feel empowered [and] to take charge, and to take their power back and be proud of their identity, as well as to push for more Deaf representation. Gallaudet University set us up well for that; not only that, but I think staying strong in protest… this is a protest that gave rise to the passage of the [Americans with Disabilities Act].” (The ADA would be signed into law in 1990.)

Deaf President Now, with a running time of close to 2 hours and out a week from today, May 16, chronicles what Apple describes as “eight tumultuous days in 1988” at the aforementioned Gallaudet during which four students led a revolution that would change the course of history. The school describes the so-called “DPN protest” as a “watershed moment” that led to the appointment of the first-ever Deaf president in school history. The 🤯 emoji is apropos here: an institution devoted to the higher learning of Deaf and hard-of-hearing people, then 124 years old, must resort to protest in order to elect a leader that looks like them—someone who’s part and parcel of them. DPN, Gallaudet writes, has henceforth become “synonymous with self-determination and empowerment for Deaf and hard-of-hearing people everywhere.” The DPN protest began on March 6, when a hearing woman named Elizabeth Zinser was named Gallaudet’s 7th president over two Deaf candidates in Irving King Jordan and Harvey Corson. Jordan eventually would assume the presidential post following the protests.

DiMarco expounded further on the motivations behind making Deaf President Now, telling me when he broke into Hollywood a decade ago, there existed no Deaf people working as directors, producers, and/or writers. For too long, DiMarco added, the stories of his community were “co-opted” by the hearing; he was hellbent on changing that narrative. It was a feeling which compelled him to start his own Deaf-led company. Its North Star, he explained to me, would be to always “[tell] those stories [by] empowering Deaf creatives to get behind the camera and share their voice.”

“Growing up, I saw Deaf characters and storylines represented in TV and media, and while it was good to have representation, it was never done authentically,” DiMarco said. “I think Hollywood didn’t understand what the Deaf experience could look like, because we weren’t invited into those rooms where those stories were being crafted. The first project I wanted to work on was Deaf President Now. This was more than just the appointment of a Deaf president to the university—this was a way to show the world that we’re a community… we have a language and what all of that [culture] looks like.”

Deaf President Now director and producer Davis Guggenheim, who’s hearing, admitted he was one who didn’t get Deaf culture, nor was he aware of the history of the DPN protest—this ironically coming from a history major in college. What’s more, Guggenheim worked at ABC News’ Nightline news program in 1986; Guggenheim worked there during the show’s heyday when Ted Koppel anchored the anchor desk.

“I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know about this [DPN protest] story,” Guggenheim said. “It’s meaningful to me… I’ll never fully understand Deaf culture, so it was a privilege to be invited [to make Deaf President Now] by Nyle to tell this story together.”

Guggenheim spoke with humility about the film’s meaning for the masses.

“We both realized the story must be understood from both audiences: a Deaf audience and a hearing audience, and that the neglect [of the history] from the hearing side,” he said. “If you’re Deaf, most people know this story. If you’re hearing, most people don’t know this story. For me, [working on Deaf President Now] was correcting history.”

Guggenheim went on to say, citing the present-day unrest over our country’s Constitution and our values system, and the ever-hostile sociopolitical climate, the DPN protest beautifully illustrates the notion that “collective action can work big,” adding “young people can organize, work together and succeed in protest.” He also stressed his belief that the film, and protest generally, both are things “we need right now” and said audiences hopefully feel similarly when they watch Deaf President Now.

When pressed on his aforementioned ignorance regarding the DPN history, Guggenheim acknowledged having good intentions “isn’t enough.” Before making Deaf President Now, he felt complacency in the concept he was a good, well-intentioned human—but said his prior attitude was “wrong-headed” in retrospect. Moreover, these lessons extended to the production work on the film, with Guggenheim saying it was DiMarco who (kindly) checked him, and offered to teach, when his good intentions run amuck. However “gracious and generous” DiMarco was, the experience was an enlightening one for Guggenheim—it helped him confront his prior ignorance.

For its part, DiMarco told me Apple TV+ always felt like “the obvious home” for Deaf President Now. He said the company “has always been on the forefront of accessibility and empowering the Deaf and disabled community to tell their own stories and to be independent.” Apple, he reiterated, was “a perfect home” for DiMarco and team.

“We’re incredibly thankful to [Apple] for championing this beautiful film,” he said.

When asked about pre-release feedback to Deaf President Now, DiMarco excitedly noted it’s been nothing but positivity all the way down. He said the most crucial response is that of his own community, telling me the people he’s spoken to say they’re confident Deaf President Now will have “great influence.” DiMarco further noted he feels “very lucky” to treat this history lesson with the utmost respect possible. Deaf President Now has a timeliness to it, he added, telling me emphatically “I think a lot of our Deaf audience is feeling very inspired [and] ready to take up the fight again.”

“I don’t think we’ve [communally] ever been as proud to be Deaf as we are in this moment,” DiMarco said. “That means everything to me.”

Guggenheim expressed gratitude for the ability to make documentaries, telling me the greatest thing about them is they intimately take everyone—filmmakers and viewers alike—into worlds unknown. He pointed to a shot in the beginning of the movie in which the camera moves from a noisy ambient environment into Gallaudet’s opened gates, where everything suddenly is “more quiet.” However quiet, Guggenheim emphasized Gallaudet is “rich and beautiful and complex.” The wider world deserves to know that.

“It’s such a great job I have [as a director and producer] to be able to open my mind and heart to something new,” Guggenheim said.

Both DiMarco and Guggenheim said they wish for everyone to watch Deaf President Now and educate themselves by getting glimpses of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community and, pointedly, of their unique culture. That’s what DiMarco said he and his creative team is “pushing for.” He added Hollywood is rife with umpteenth remakes which bear little originality, saying Deaf President Now ‘s approach is “totally new.” Guggenheim concurred, saying to me “we love [the movie] and want people to see it.”

As to the future, DiMarco said he aspires to build on Deaf President Now. Significant though it is, he said the DPN movement really is “a snapshot in history” and there are many more stories to tell. DiMarco has dreams of inviting more hearing people to learn about the Deaf world, whether through more documentaries, scripted series, or other opportunities that come his way. “I hope we can continue to tell incredible Deaf stories and bring Deaf creatives behind the camera and making our history being known [and] making this more than a moment, but a movement that can’t be stopped,” he said.

Guggenheim is down to ride with DiMarco on the journeys to follow.

“What I’m learning now is it’s not enough to make a film,” Guggenheim said. “You have to figure out how to carry [Deaf President Now] so everyone can see it. I believe it’s a beautiful film and hope people see it and be moved, but not everyone’s going to know about it. Not everyone’s going to see it. I want to do everything I can to get see this movie, because Nyle is a big champion of it. I want to see this movie seen far and wide.”

Gallaudet University, Coke Team Up for New ‘We Want to teach the world to sign’ Ad

Gallaudet University president Robert Cordano posted on LinkedIn this week about a newly-released ad campaign created in collaboration between the school and Coca-Cola. The nearly 90-second spot is available to watch on Gallaudet’s YouTube channel.

I’ve embedded the ad below. As I wrote on X, the spot warms my CODA-filled heart.

Gallaudet, established in 1864 amidst the Civil War and based in Washington DC, is the world’s first and only collegiate institution exclusively for Deaf and hard-of-hearing people. (Gallaudet does admit a small number of hearing students—most of them being CODAs—as the proverbial exceptions to the rule.) Despite its preeminence, it’s worth noting Gallaudet was founded under the horrifically ableist and dehumanizing “National College for the Deaf and Dumb,” with the current name being taken in 1894.

I’ve covered Gallaudet at close range several times in the last few years. Its football team, the Bisons, plays with adaptive helmets developed with 5G technology from AT&T that houses a digital display through which the quarterback receives play calls from coaches on the sideline. As to Cordano, I profiled her back in 2022 for my old Forbes column about her career and purview of the school. Cardano, who’s known as “Bobbi” by those who love her, is noteworthy for being Gallaudet’s first Deaf woman, and first member of the LGBTQ community, to assume the perch in the university’s catbird seat.

The story of how a mass shooting’s Tragedy is as much About Accessibility as Humanity

As an avowed news nerd, particularly locally and on PBS, it was a huge, if bittersweet, thrill for me to be contacted late last year by folks associated with FRONTLINE—one of my favorite shows—to discuss their coverage of the October 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. The event, which killed 18 people and wounded 13 more, is notable not merely because it was yet another mass shooting, but because it’s known to be the largest mass shooting involving members of the Deaf community in American history.

My pals at FRONTLINE ran a documentary back in December called Breakdown in Maine about the Lewiston shooting, perpetrated by a former Army Reservist, which examined not only the shooter’s brain injury that spurred the violence, but also the (in)accessibility of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community in the small New England town to receive crucial status updates on the incident. FRONTLINE joined journalistic forces with the Portland Press Herald and Maine Public to produce the 54-minute film.

Erin Texeira is the senior editor for FRONTLINE and leads its local journalism initiative. In an interview, she explained her team works with 3–5 local news outlets per year on “deep investigative projects” that otherwise wouldn’t be tackled due to a scarcity of resources. She reiterated the Lewiston shooting is regarded as the largest mass casualty event to hit the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community in American history, adding a large focus of the teams’ coverage centers on “the struggles for accessibility and emergency services and basic information and support in the aftermath of the shootings.” As everyone considered the content, Texeira said it became clear the reporters could do justice by the victims, and the audience, by thinking how “we could bring this work to the very community [Deaf people in Lewiston] we were reporting on.”

Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, told me in a concurrent interview to Texeira’s the Lewiston massacre coverage comes in two parts: the aforementioned film and a podcast. One of the most personally striking things about the shooting to Rath is learning from Deaf and hard-of hearing people in the community express exasperation and frustration over the aftermath, telling me their biggest beef was with how hard it was to communicate with first responders and other emergency personnel. Rath called this a critical part of the story; in the spirit of the press holding people accountable, she said it was imperative to find out what the “actual breakdowns” were in the shooting’s wake such that these disabled people couldn’t reliably get the information they needed and were entitled to know. In a show of empathy and earnestness for inclusivity, Rath said her team didn’t want to exclude the Deaf community as part of their reporting; in other words, they didn’t want to leave them hanging communicatively as they were the night of the incident. To that end, the FRONTLINE team enlisted Donna Danielewski and team at Boston-based GBH to help.

Danielewski, who serves as the station’s executive director of accessibility, said the Deaf community in Lewiston is relatively small and the journalists had to approach the interview process with delicacy because a bunch of strangers are essentially asking people to relive their trauma by retelling it. GBH, according to Danielewski, “has a strong history of media accessibility,” but they learned a lot through the process. She and her charges wanted to represent these people in a thoughtful way, which Danielewski said required overcoming some “new hurdles” along the way. Overall, though, Danielewski told me her team learned “a lot” during the production process.

Rath said the director of Breakdown in Maine, James Blue, spent time in Lewiston and with some of the victims’ families. Rath saw video of people talking, with ASL interpreters in tow, and approached Texeira with the idea that Lewiston could make for one of the local journalism projects. It represented a “powerful moment,” Rath said,” to expose the general public about a side of a mass shooting—disability and accessibility—that oftentimes isn’t told yet should be told. Texeira concurred, saying Rath “made a great case” and noted all the legwork came together “organically” to, in the end, produce something Texeira proudly called “a beautiful episode” of FRONTLINE.

As to the local boots on the ground, Maine Public deputy news director Susan Sharon told me she and her colleague in reporter Patty Wight, both based in Lewiston, attended shooting-related press conferences, known as “pressers” to those in the news business, and noted “early on” Deaf people were in the audience and tried to get others to interpret for them. Like the FRONTLINE crew, Sharon and Wight saw the parallels between the shooting itself and the collateral damage it did to a group of people normally overlooked. Sharon called it “a learning experience” for everyone involved in her newsroom, telling me Lewiston has a small but close-knit deaf community. The tragedy, horrific though it was, exposed another tragedy: the lack of access for Deaf people to get info in an accessible manner. Sharon called it “an education for us.”

For her part, Wight said four people from the town’s Deaf community were killed and said it stood out because it “seemed like a lot.” She recounted one press conference in particular during which an ASL interpreter had to stand atop a desk because officials showed maps of the search area for the shooter, and the interpreter was “frustrated” at trying so hard to get the information conveyed to the Deaf members of the audience. Wight talked to the person following the presser and was told the Deaf community was “desperate” to get any and all information from authorities. They felt left out, she added, which is what piqued Wight and team’s interest. There have long been systemic issues in effective communications between the predominantly hearing public and the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community and, according to Wight, the shooting exponentially magnified the issues that, despite festering for eons, have gone ignored.

Deaf family members, already on pins and needles with anxiety, had to wait a long time to get any confirmation on a loved one’s status. Not only did the literal relay of information take time, but then it took time for logistics to happen to get an interpreter in place. And on top of that, the accuracy of everything had to be vetted to ensure everything was correct and nothing was lost in translation. Notably, English is not the primary language for the majority of Deaf people in this country, whether in Maine or Montana; American Sign Language is, yet ASL interpreters unfortunately and frustratingly “weren’t always visible” during the slew of news conferences, Wight said.

Captions, she added, “didn’t cut it” in terms of accuracy. These people needed ASL.

Accessibility-wise, Maine has a shortage of ASL interpreters. In general, it isn’t the Deaf or hard-of-hearing person’s responsibility to supply their interpreter; the onus should fall on the institution or agency. The problem is, of course, most people don’t realize this. Wight went on to tell me many of the Deaf people she interviewed in Lewiston lamented this issue, noting, again, English is decidedly not their native language. “I think people in the community are frustrated there’s so little knowledge about their needs,” Wight said. “These issues are not new. They’ve been going on for decades.”

There’s been a learning curve for news stations and officials at press conferences to, for instance, make concerted efforts to feature ASL interpreters prominently in camera shots so Deaf people can see them. The shooting, Wight and her colleagues told me, has had a byproduct of raising more awareness of the importance for accessibility—especially with more training of people staffing hospitals, law enforcement, and others. Rath told me many people used an iPad at hospitals in order to communicate with staff.

As I went through the interview process of my own, what struck me the most about the conversations I had with my media industry peers is the subtext behind Breakdown in Maine. To wit, of course there will be discussion of the shooter and their motivation(s), especially in terms of mental health. Of course there’s a story about equity of access for a group of disabled people. Even greater than that, however, is the story of awareness. These are a (admittedly small) sample of my peers, living 3,000 away from me, who learned a helluva lot themselves about a segment of the disability community and, consequently, of accessibility. This is notable because it means awareness goes both ways; holding truth to power is one thing, but the journalists here holding themselves to account by earnestly wanting to learn and do right by authenticity and empathy is quite another. As someone 12 years into this news racket, perpetually lamenting the lackluster treatment of the disability community by the mainstream media, to hear people of my own professional kind speak with such humility was damn refreshing. My beat may be technology, but it’s stories like Breakdown in Maine that give me hope that the able-bodied masses are—finally!—starting to give the people like me, who exist at at the margin’s margin, our overdue credit. “Nothing about us without us,” indeed.

The “ripple effects,” as Danielewski described them, are many—and benefit everyone.

"I think conversations that are now happening at FRONTLINE are different… that always happens [here],” Rath said of the many lessons learned by working on Breakdown in Maine. “The more we do and the more we innovate, the more we realize we need to do and innovate. It’s absolutely super inspiring doing this and the learning curve was steep for everybody who worked on it, other than probably [Danielewski] and her team, for those of us at FRONTLINE. It’s great for us as a national series, with so many people who watch us and see us, to be thinking actively [about communicative equality] like this.”

“It’s been an expansive thinking moment for us in public media around our reporting,” said Mark Simpson, Maine Public’s director of news and public affairs.

The efforts GBH, Maine Public Media, et al, did for their story, Danielewski told me, “builds on itself” until “our few snowflakes turn into a pretty impressive snowman.”

My conversations for this story occurred several months ago, ahead of Breakdown in Maine airing on TV. But today comes an announcement from FRONTLINE that it has released ASL-interpreted videos of the “Breakdown: Turning Anguish into Action” podcast series which complements the film. In its press release, FRONTLINE says it worked with captioning and signing language company Partners Interpreting on the project, noting record took place at GBH’s studios. At its core, the work makes what’s ostensibly an exclusionary medium for those with little-to-no hearing into something that’s accessible and inclusive—the last especially poignant given the immense popularity of podcasts nowadays. That “Breakdown” has an ASL component means, despite the emotional subject matter, nonetheless means everyone can enjoy it.

“Podcasts are a vital and growing part of the American news ecosystem, yet they remain mostly inaccessible to the millions of Americans who are deaf and hard of hearing,” Texeira said in a statement for the announcement. “We’re proud that, through innovative storytelling, we can now bring this important investigative project to all audiences. And we hope this inspires much more accessibility in journalism.”

It’s worth mentioning the reaction to the Lewiston shooting has parallels to the inaccessibility of California’s Text-to-911 service. My friend Candice Nguyen, an investigative reporter at NBC Bay Area, wrote about this issue in 2023. She wrote, in part, the ostensibly convenient service “disproportionately” impacts those in the Deaf community, as well as victims of violence. The fundamental issue is the 911 system is architected on voice calls—which are incongruent to the needs of many Deaf people. Both the Lewiston shooting and Text-to-911 are prime examples of the exclusionary machinations of the emergency response system. If you’re someone who can’t hear or speak—or, in my case, speaks with a speech disability like a stutter—emergencies are prone to be even more stressful because getting help is inaccessible. Put more cynically, the breakdowns in access highlight how society is unbuilt for the disabled.

Audio of “Breakdown” is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Video is on YouTube.

Google’s New ‘Simplify’ tool Makes Reading Comprehension On the web More accessible

A report from Abner Li at 9to5 Google this week brings news Google has added a new feature to its iOS app designed to simplify verbiage. The tool, befittingly called “Simplify,” is available for people to use when they come across complex language.

“When viewing a Search result or Discover article in the Google app, highlighting text that ‘uses jargon or technical concepts you’re not familiar with’ will reveal a new ‘Simplify’ option in the ‘More actions’ panel (alongside Search and Translate),” Li writes in describing how Simplify works. “This opens a sheet with a ‘new, simpler version of the text, helping you quickly understand a new concept so you can keep reading.’”

Google’s Simplify functionality is built atop Gemini 1.5 models, which is described as “specifically designed for minimally-lossy (high-fidelity) text simplification.” Li notes the company isn’t merely summarizing or explaining; rather, the software’s job is to clearly and concisely convey ideas without errors or omissions. Moreover, Li writes Google conducted research that eventually found simplified text proved “significantly more helpful” than the original version. Google tested Simplify across numerous domains, including aerospace, finance, law, literature, medical research, and more.

Li’s story gives an example of Simplify at work with biomedical text (emphasis Li’s):

• Original: The complex pathology of this condition involves emphysematous destruction of lung parenchyma, diffuse interstitial fibrosis, changes in the composition of lung immune cells, increased production of immunomodulatory factors and the prominent remodeling of pulmonary vasculature

• Simplified: This complex condition involves damage to the lung tissue from emphysema, a disease that damages the air sacs in the lungs, and widespread scarring of the lung tissue, called fibrosis. The immune cells in the lungs change, and the body makes more immunomodulatory factors, substances that control the immune system. The blood vessels in the lungs also change a lot.

In an accessibility context, Google’s new Simplify tool should be a boon for those who cope with intellectual disabilities. The stripped-down text not only makes for easier reading in terms of cognitive load, it boosts comprehension because it’s plainspoken and unpretentious. These factors ultimately go a long way to making Google Search more accessible when looking up information on the web. Relatedly, I’ve found Apple’s “Summarize” command within Safari to not only be spot-on in terms of accuracy, but it also provides cogent, easily digestible overviews of written work—including my own stories here. For all Apple Intelligence’s struggles over the last several months, the “Summarize” tool has worked impressively well in my (admittedly anecdotal) testing.

Netflix Unveils Substantial App Redesign, Calling It An ‘Innovative New TV Experience’

Netflix on Wednesday introduced a refreshed design of its television and mobile apps that the company says offers users “a simpler, easier, and more intuitive design” designed with the goal of helping everyone “easily find something great to watch.” The Bay Area-based company’s work was described in detail by two executives: chief product officer Eunice Kim and chief technology officer Elizabeth Stone. “The new Netflix TV experience is still the one you know and love—just better,” Kim said.

Netflix’s design teams settled on a look that isn’t necessarily unique generally. The revamped user interface is anchored by a top row of tabs, with engaging visuals taking up most of the screen. Notably, there are callouts within title artwork conveying information such as “Emmy Award Winner” or “#1 in TV Shows.” Netflix also boasts about oft-used shortcuts like My List were heretofore “somewhat hidden” having more prominence, adding the design gives users robust real-time recommendations as well.

Overall, Netflix proudly touts its new homepage as featuring “a clean and modern design that better reflects the elevated experience you’ve come to expect on Netflix.”

On the mobile side, Netflix says it’s testing “a vertical feed filled with clips of Netflix shows and movies to make discovery easy and fun.” Users can tap to watch something immediately, add it to their watchlist, and/or share a link with family and friends. The vertical feed is reminiscent of how Instagram Reels or TikTok have classically worked.

Netflix has a video introducing its new homepage on YouTube (embedded below).

From an accessibility perspective, the redesigned homepage feels like a win. I’m especially heartened by the shortcuts—particularly to My List—as the current design involves a good amount of visual and mental gymnastics to find at times. Likewise in terms of cognition, that the main navigation is positioned at the top of the screen gives users a better, more concrete understanding that you go to the top to move and change views. Netflix’s redesign reminds of what Amazon did to Prime Video last year. Both designs are conceptually similar, especially with menu items anchoring the top of the screen in the TV apps. Accessibility-wise, Netflix and Prime Video have similar gains.

One bit of news related to today’s announcement. I asked Netflix about a status update regarding the short-lived integration with Apple’s TV app and a spokesperson told me via email it indeed was “a bug.” Nonetheless, hope springs eternal—the code exists!

Netflix’s redesign will be rolling out worldwide “in the coming weeks and months.”

Inside the ‘Donkey Hodie’ Team’s Efforts to Go Even harder on Disability Representation

I wrote last year about the PBS Kids educational game called Cousin Hodie Playdate. The game, available on the network’s website and its games app, is designed to help young children develop their emotional intelligence by paying attention to social-emotional cues such as body language and verbalization. The title takes its source material from the canonical animated TV series Donkey Hodie, aimed at preschoolers.

Cousin Hodie Playdate is produced by Fred Rogers Productions and Curious Media.

Last month, PBS Kids introduced a new character to the Donkey Hodie ensemble in Jeff Mouse. He was born with congenital muscular dystrophy and uses an electric wheelchair to get around. Jeff Mouse was inspired by the real-life experiences of Jeff Erlanger, who, in 1981 appeared on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood to do a duet with Rogers of “It’s You I Like.” The eponymous Fred Rogers Productions tapped the team at nonprofit organization Disability Belongs to serve in an advisory capacity, with Jeff Mouse being voiced by actor Jay Manuel. Manuel, who stars in Jay and Pamela on TLC, copes with Osteogenesis Imperfecta Type 3 (OI) and, like Jeff Mouse, uses a power chair for mobility. OI, colloquially known as brittle bone disease, is a genetic condition whereby bones easily fracture—oftentimes with no clear cause. Symptoms can be mild to severe, the most extreme of which bringing a myriad of complications as a result.

“We want to keep introducing characters who reflect and represent our audience who have different points of view and experiences. Understanding someone else’s point of view is part of building empathy, and older preschoolers are learning to do that through recognizing and naming not just their own feelings, but the feelings of others,” said Donkey Hodie co-executive producer Kristin DiQuollo in a recent interview with me conducted over email. “Introducing a character with a physical disability felt like something we could do thoughtfully and successfully with puppetry.”

DiQuollo explained the addition of Jeff Mouse “brings a unique perspective” to the show’s cast, adding “he helps show how we can do the same thing different ways.” She pointed to a line from Jeff Mouse in which he says in part “there are some things that I can’t do, but there are a lot of things I can do.” The line, DiQuollo told me, is a reference to a quote by Erlanger, who said “it doesn’t matter what I can’t do—what matters is what I can do.” DiQuollo and her colleagues also worked alongside Samuel Krauss, who advised the team on building Jeff Mouse’s character—including biographical details such as being born with muscular dystrophy and needing a power chair to get around. Krauss’ input including giving consideration to Jeff Mouse’s movement in the show’s Someplace Else environment. Specifically, DiQuollo said Jeff Mouse has “global limb and trunk weakness” in his extremities, also noting his wheelchair features a center-turning radius and smooth movement. Moreover, Disability Belongs connected with mobility company Permobil; according to DiQuollo, Permobil brought a demo wheelchair to the team’s Chicago-based art department, where the team created a chair for Jeff Mouse based on the model and Jeff Mouse’s puppet. DiQuollo added Krauss and Disability Belongs helped “capture the whimsical nature of Someplace Else while also ensuring a relatable representation of a power wheelchair user.” Additionally, Manuel, DiQuollo said, spoke with Jeff Mouse’s puppeteer, Stephanie D’Abruzzo, so the pair could “talk through Jeff’s movements, like how it would look when Jeff’s chair goes over certain surfaces, or how he would move his arms.”

“The size and weight of Jeff Mouse and his wheelchair were designed to give the puppeteers the ability to make precise and realistic movements of the character,” said David Rudman, co-creator and executive producer of Donkey Hodie and co-founder of Spiffy Pictures, in a short statement provided to me for this story. “The performers operate all of the Donkey Hodie puppets with their arms raised and since the characters do not have a surface to stand on, we needed to ensure that we were able to move the wheelchair in a true to life way as if it were actually rolling on the ground.”

The work the team put in for authenticity’s sake reflects an ethos on inclusivity.

“Like all our pals do in other stories, Jeff leads the day’s adventure, and his ideas contribute to the team and help solve the problem at hand,” DiQuollo said. “He introduces the idea that they can do the same thing different ways, and in the end, that strategy is what helps them all climb the Rainbow Tree to find the hee-hee hider moth.”

She continued: “Our show celebrates friendship, joy, and what makes us unique. Jeff is the latest friend we’ve introduced who has a unique perspective and way of experiencing the world, which is true of all our characters.”

DiQuollo shared about a playful Easter egg. In the episode where Jeff Mouse appears for the first time, the accompanying music is an arrangement paying homage to the aforementioned “It’s You I Like” tune Erlanger and Rogers sang four decades ago.

DiQuollo told me bringing Jeff Mouse to life on Donkey Hodie took “many people” at Fred Rogers Productions and Spiffy Pictures. She keenly credited a laundry list of contributors like writers, post-production teams, and much more. She called everyone involved with the program as “thoughtful, creative, fun, funny, and deeply respectful of the world we’re building and the legacy we’re building on,” adding the cumulative efforts were integral to making Jeff Mouse “a joyful new part of our neighborhood, and I hope viewers love meeting Jeff and watching our show as much as we love making it.”

Donkey Hodie episodes with Jeff Mouse are available to stream now, free of charge.