Google Adds Captions to Gemini Live Conversations
Abner Li reported for 9to5 Google earlier this week Google has added support for captions to Gemini Live in the company’s eponymously-named Gemini app on iOS and Android. The captions began appearing for some users earlier in June, according to Li.
“When you launch Gemini Live on Android or iOS, a rectangular captions button appears in the top-right corner. Tapping will enable a floating box that provides a transcript of Gemini’s responses. (This does not show what you’re saying in real-time, but that remains available in the full text transcript after ending the conversation.),” Li wrote. “It appears near the middle of the fullscreen interface in audio mode, and at the top when video streaming is enabled. These three lines of text cannot be moved or resized. In Gemini > Settings, there’s a new ‘Caption preferences’ item underneath the ‘Interrupt Live responses’ on/off toggle that links to system settings on Android.”
The big takeaway is, obviously, conversations with Gemini will be more accessible.
As I’ve noted before, I have the Gemini app for iOS on my iPhone’s Home Screen, as well as a widget on the Lock Screen. I really enjoy Gemini as my preferred generative AI tool, and have found it has supplanted much, if not most, of my web searches via Safari. I find Gemini to be a way more accessible (and digestible) method to get quick bursts of information collated in one place rather than manage a half-dozen browser tabs. “Trust but verify” goes the axiom, of course, so I’m well aware Gemini will (and does!) hallucinate from time to time, but I’ve been more than satisfied with its performance overall. I have a ChatGPT Plus subscription too, since notably Apple Intelligence integrates with it, but I generally like the Gemini app experience better. Perhaps that’ll change once the Jony Ive-Sam Altman partnership bears more fruit, but for now, I’m a happy Gemini user. Despite the rapidity with which AI seemingly advances nowadays, the reality is the technology still is really early in the proverbial ballgame. That Google—and OpenAI, for that matter—is clearly committing to making its respective tools accessible is a ray of hope for the inclusiveness of AI’s ever-burgeoning capabilities.
Google’s Successor to the Nest × Yale Lock Arrives
Ben Schoon reports for 9to5 Google the first-ever “Google Home Preferred” product is here and it’s the successor to the Nest × Yale lock: the $189 Yale Smart Lock with Matter.
The Matter moniker is an important detail, as it means the Yale Smart Lock can be used with Google Home, Alexa—and, pertinent to my preferred ecosystem, Apple’s HomeKit.
“This lock is very much designed to fit into Google’s ecosystem and acts as a successor to the Nest × Yale Lock,” Schoon said of Yale’s newest smart lock. “The design of the lock is meant to match the finish of Google’s Nest Doorbell lineup, with ‘Snow’ and ‘Matte Black’ finishes available today and an ‘Ash’ colorway coming later on. The accents on each are meant to match common door hardware finishes. As a backup to your app or a keycode, there’s a keyhole which was missing on the Nest × Yale Lock.”
I’m writing about this because (a) Curb Cuts is my website; but (b) because I’ve been using the legacy Nest × Yale lock for a few years now. It still works with aplomb, but admittedly part of my allegiance to sticking with it is due to the fact I’m simultaneously clutching to the OG Nest app on iOS and iPadOS for dear life. I do have Google Home on my devices too, but the UI, design-wise, is inferior to that of the old Nest app. Someday the Nest app will be put out to pasture and I’ll begrudgingly have to adopt Google Home. But today is not that day, so I’ll be riding with the Nest app until the absolute very end.
Speaking of an end, this week’s news from Schoon on the new Yale Smart Lock means damn near every device in my smart home setup—all devices running through HomeKit via the Starling Home Hub—is, while remaining perfectly serviceable in a functional sense, is otherwise “antiquated” and summarily discontinued technologically.
Nest Hello doorbell
Nest E thermostat (with accompanying room sensors)
Nest Protect smoke and carbon dioxide detector
Nest Outdoor Cams
Nest × Yale door lock
The Nest × Yale lock in particular has been a game-changer for me in terms of accessibility. It only controls the deadbolt, however, as my partner still prefers a physical key for the actual doorknob. Nonetheless, not having to fiddle with the key on both locks is far more accessible; my lackluster hand-eye coordination makes it such that it can be hard to find the keyhole, insert the key, and turn. Especially when coming home with, say, a bag of groceries, that I can use my iPhone—or better yet, Siri—to unlock the door transcends sheer convenience. It makes my house more accessible.
As to a potential upgrade, I’m intrigued by another Yale product: the Assure Lock 2 Plus. On its website, the company describes it as “the smart lock made for Apple users” as it supports Apple’s Home Key feature. Released with iOS 15 in 2021, Home Key allows users to use their iPhone or Apple Watch as their “house keys” by integrating with the Wallet app on iOS and watchOS. The reason I’m so fascinated by Home Key is, of course, accessibility; instead of tapping a button, I could simply hold my device close to the Assure Lock 2 Plus and the door would unlock. This is exactly why I adore the Auto Unlock feature in Waymo, whereby the car doors unlock as you approach. The Waymo One app does have an Unlock button, but it’s far more accessible to not have to tap it.
For the foreseeable future, though, I’ll be clinging to my OG Nest × Yale lock.
My bit Part In Apple Podcasts’ two Decade story
Apple on Thursday celebrated a big anniversary: Apple Podcasts has turned 20! To mark the milestone, the company released a staff-selected list of “20 podcasts we love.”
“Since the medium came to iTunes in 2005, our team has dedicated countless hours to helping people discover new shows. To celebrate 20 years, here are 20 favorites that best exemplify how far podcasting has come—and where it can go in the next two decades,” Apple writes in the list’s introduction. “This list is a love letter to the podcasts that left a lasting impact on us and the ones we continue to recommend again and again. They are shows with hosts that feel like friends, and shows that make us press play immediately on the latest episode to hear what happens next. These shows have measurably improved our lives and helped define this medium we know and love.”
Of those on Apple’s list, only The Daily (started in 2017) is one I listen to religiously.
Launched in 2005, Apple Podcasts predates my usage by a couple years; my first-ever Apple product was the original iPhone two years later. Over the last 18 years, however, podcasts have remained a constant in my digital life. I love them for the background noise they provide as I work on stories like this very piece, for the ways newsy shows like the aforementioned The Daily keeps me informed, and for the ways they let me indulge in nerdery on shows from friends of mine in the Apple/tech media communities. Once upon a time, I even had a podcast of my own called Accessible. The show’s website/listing is long gone from the web, but it was a fortnightly program I co-hosted with my close friend Timothy Buck during which we discussed all things accessibility in tech. We had a good run, even interviewing Apple’s accessibility boss in Sarah Herrlinger in person at one San Jose-based WWDC. I’m decidedly not an active podcaster nowadays, but have guested on my share of shows since Accessible unceremoniously ended. I do think about getting back into the game from time to time, but for now, I think I’ll focus my energies into getting Curb Cuts featured in Apple News.
(If you’d like me on your podcast to talk disability inclusion and the like, get in touch.)
From 30,000 feet, Apple has generally been a strong steward of its Podcasts platform. From an accessibility perspective, it’s certainly damn notable how the company has invested time and resources in making podcasts more accessible through transcripts. As with Music Haptics in Apple Music, it’s not at all trivial that, as I’ve espoused many times recently, Apple is taking an ostensibly exclusionary medium to, say, Deaf and hard-of-hearing people and making it eminently more inclusive vis-a-vis transcripts.
Apple’s “20 Podcasts” list follows a “100 Best Albums” list shared on Apple Music.
Thoughts On AirPods, Cameras, and Accessibility
Ryan Christoffel reports for 9to5 Mac this week a new feature in iOS 26 is a harbinger of camera-equipped AirPods Pro. Among the enhancements coming to AirPods this year is a Camera Remote feature. The functionality is similar to that on Apple Watch, whereby users can use the Watch as a shutter button; as Christoffel writes, users can “use AirPods to capture photos and video on your iPhone in situations that’s helpful… either by pressing once on the AirPods stem or pressing and holding—your choice.”
Christoffel goes on to say the Camera Remote feature on AirPods is notable because rumors suggest the next generation AirPods Pro are, again, said to include cameras. A release timeframe is unknown outside of Apple Park, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported the refreshed earbuds feature “external cameras and artificial intelligence to understand the outside world and provide information to the user.” That iOS 26 does include the Camera Remote feature is evidence Apple is getting its proverbial ducks in a row by ensuring its software can support its forthcoming hardware whenever it comes.
There’s much to extrapolate from Christoffel’s informed speculation, not the least of which is how intrepid observers (and spelunkers) oftentimes will notice Apple setting the stage in advance of grand reveals. The size class APIs introduced at WWDC 2014 presaged the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus announcement a few months later. HealthKit, also new in 2014, was destined for Apple Watch. At WWDC 2015, iPad multitasking by way of Slide Over and Split View were announced prior to the iPad Pro’s unveiling. And in more recent times, the advent of ARKit in 2017 seemingly provided clues Apple was working on something using augmented reality; that hunch proved prescient as the company eventually revealed Vision Pro at WWDC 2023. It could even be persuasively argued the all-new Liquid Glass design language, ostensibly meant for today’s devices, was created with an eye towards still-in-development AR-powered glasses for tomorrow.
In an accessibility context, the Camera Remote feature on AirPods strikes me as fascinating. To wit, it’s entirely plausible someone who wears AirPods also doesn’t have use of their arms/hands, whether wholly or in part. While it’s possible today for said person to use voice to control playback and the like, having Camera Remote on AirPods would give a person whom I mention another avenue through which to accessibly take pictures. Likewise, that Gurman said Apple reportedly plans to imbue these future AirPods Pro with AI chops such that people could better “understand the outside world” means, for example, navigation could become easier, as might people recognition. Imagine Siri telling a Blind or low vision person, Her-style, that the person approaching them to say hello is their brother or sister or someone else in their digital rolodex. There are other possible applications, of course, but these examples are intriguing because they potentially can make the world literally more accessible to disabled people. It’s cool tech, but also genuinely useful—and empowering to boot.
Such a sentiment is a common refrain with AirPods Pro lately.
Waymo is making its way to new York city
Andrew Romero reported late last week for 9to5 Google that Waymo has teased New York City as its next place it plans to “plant autonomous ride-sharing.” As Romero caveats, however, the proverbial seeds are going to take some time to bear fruit.
According to Romero, the Alphabet-owned Waymo took to X last week to share it has officially initiated the process to get its autonomous vehicles running on the streets of New York City. The company announced it has applied for a permit with the city’s Department of Transportation as a first step, noting a “specialist” from the agency will be sitting behind the wheel of Waymo’s Jaguar SUVs. Waymo also noted it’s working with state lawmakers to amend legislation so as to legalize fully autonomous vehicles.
“We want to serve more people in more places, including New York,” Waymo said.
The NYC news comes after Waymo announced expansion to Washington DC in March.
I’ll have more Waymo news on Curb Cuts in the coming weeks, but for now, any news of expansion is great for accessibility’s sake. Last week, I took part in a panel discussion at the Accessible Futures conference during which I spoke of the immense accessibility gains rideshare services have for Blind and low vision people such as myself. Of course Lyft and Uber have relevance here, but I spoke most enthusiastically of Waymo and the positive effects it has on my life. (Video and a transcript will be posted soon, I’m told.) As Waymo attests, there’s a helluva lot of bureaucratic stuff to tend to first, but any expansion news is heartening because it means (a) Waymo is doing well, business-wise; and (b) arguably more importantly, it means greater agency and autonomy in transit for myself and others like me across the country. The more places Waymo sets up shop, the more places we non-drivers can go—with greater independence, no less.
The Waymo-to-NYC news is joined by Tesla launching its robotaxi service in Austin.
Amazon’s Recent Kindle Software Update Adds More Line, Text Spacing options for accessibility
Andrew Liszewski reports for The Verge today on Amazon releasing a Kindle-based software update to users which, according to the release notes, includes the boilerplate performance enhancements and bug fixes, but notably includes upgrades for better visual accessibility. He writes the improvements come by way of “adjusting text and line spacing, improving legibility and accessibility for many users.” The new 5.18.3 update is supported by the Kindle Scribe, Kindle Colorsoft, as well as the 11th and 12th generation of the Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite models, according to Liszewski.
“Amazon is slowly rolling it out through the Kindle’s automatic updates system,” Liszewski said of the company’s recently released upgrade. “[If] you don’t want to wait, you can download the specific update file for your e-reader, copy it over to your device, and perform a manual update using the instructions Amazon has provided.”
I have a Paperwhite from 2018 and it remains a nice piece of kit, although I haven’t used it in quite some time. While I find e-ink displays to be generally accessible and easy on my eyes, I’ve actually come to favor using Apple Books on an iPad for reading books. The brightness and sharpness of the display—especially on that of the OLED screen on the M4 iPad Pro—is far nicer to look at and even more accessible. That said, I’m deeply intrigued about the aforementioned Kindle Colorsoft from Amazon; I’d love to try it out someday and then subsequently write about my experience using a color e-ink screen.
News of the Kindle 5.18.3 update was first reported by The eBook Reader.
Apple’s New Speech Frameworks Portend More Accessible Audio for Developers and users alike
John Voorhees wrote a piece for MacStories earlier this week which delves into a new class in Apple’s Speech APIs and compares it to OpenAI’s open source speech-to-text model called Whisper. Apple’s class, named SpeechAnalyzer and its corresponding module in SpeechTranscriber, both are included in the developer betas released during last week’s WWDC festivities. As Voorhees explains, Apple’s APIs are highly performant.
Software development minutia notwithstanding, the nut of Voorhees’ story—especially pertinent to accessibility—is his conclusion that the speed with which Apple’s framework works is “a game-changer for anyone who uses voice transcription to create text from lectures, podcasts, YouTube videos, and more.” By contrast, Voorhees writes Whisper is inexpensive yet glacially slow; he calls its pokiness “frustrating” when trying to finish a YouTube project. Voorhees’ son, Finn, cobbled together a command-line utility aptly named Yap that chews up audio and video files and spits them out as SRT and TXT files. Notably for accessibility purposes, SRT is a plain-text file format commonly used for displaying captions and subtitles in videos. Using Yap, built atop Apple’s aforementioned APIs, it took Voorhees a mere 45 seconds to create an SRT file for his AppStories podcast. In MacWhisper, Voorhees reports the conversion process took 1:41 and 3:55 using OpenAI’s Large V3 Turbo and Large V2 models, respectively.
Voorhees posits Apple’s frameworks represent what he described as “a significant leap forward in transcription speed without compromising on quality” while adding he believes the new APIs will “replace Whisper as the default transcription model for transcription apps on Apple platforms.” The advent of the APIs are a noteworthy development, seconded by John Gruber. He writes today it “bodes very well for all sorts of use cases where transcription would be helpful, like third-party podcast players.”
Podcast players. I’ve extolled the virtues of having high quality transcripts in podcast apps many times before; to have them is to turn what’s ostensibly an exclusionary medium to, say, Deaf and hard-of-hearing people into something substantially more inclusive. Before WWDC, I advocated for Apple to build a “TranscriptKit” API which helped App Store developers include transcripts in apps such as Marco Arment’s Overcast. As far as I know, no such tool came to be this year—but perhaps it will come in the future presumably built with these very technologies. As it stands, however, part of the problem with including transcripts in any audio app is production—it takes a while to generate accurate transcripts in a timely fashion, as Voorhees illustrates. Apple’s new APIs seemingly are designed to solve that issue, the net effect of which could be more accessible and inclusive audio apps from Arment and others in the years to come.
Yap is available for download on GitHub.
Forbes Announces First-Ever ‘Accessibility 100’ list
In surprising news, Forbes this week released its “Accessibility 100” list. As the name implies, the publication is using its famous who’s who lists to spotlight 100 people who are doing notable work in the accessibility arena. The Accessibility 100 is a Forbes first.
“Accessibility is about far more than wheelchair ramps or live captioning,” Alan Schwarz, assistant managing editor of Forbes Media, writes in the lede of the introductory portion of the list. “The field has emerged as a bustling innovation hub, an educational imperative and—unapologetically—an untapped business opportunity.”
The list is a veritable all-star team of A-listers in the accessibility space. People from Apple’s Sarah Herrlinger to her counterpart in Google’s Eve Andersson to Microsoft’s Jenny Lay-Flurrie, amongst others, all are people I have interviewed numerous times in the past. As Schwarz notes, Forbes defined accessibility in terms of software; this explains why folks like the aforementioned Herrlinger and Andersson appear on the list.
The disability community deserves more time in the limelight like the Accessibility 100.
“[Prioritizing work on accessibility] isn’t [merely] a legal obligation or ‘We just want to do nice things for those poor people,’” Marcie Roth, executive director of the World Institute on Disability, said in a statement to Schwarz. “You’re leaving money on the table because you’re only marketing to three out of four people.”
Who knows, maybe I’ll make next year’s list should Forbes include us newspeople.
Google’s June Pixel Drop Includes Android 16 for Pixel Devices, Accessibility Improvements, More
Google last week released its Pixel Drop update for June. The monthly software upgrade includes, most notably, the official release of Android 16 for Pixel devices, VIP contacts, accessibility enhancements, and much more. The brand-new improvements were highlighted in a blog post by Austin S. Lin, technical program manager at Google.
“Your Pixel just got an upgrade with the June Pixel Drop, full of new features and updates that make your devices more helpful, personalized and accessible,” Lin wrote in the introduction to Google’s announcement. “Android 16 also starts rolling out to Pixel devices today. Here are a few new things you can do with your Pixel!”
Most pertinent to my purview are the accessibility improvements. According to Lin, users are able to use Live Search in the Magnifier app—available on the Play Store—to help them “learn more about your surroundings in real time without needing to take a picture first.” If you’re looking for a specific dish on a restaurant menu, for example, it’s now possible to type what you’re looking for and Magnifier then will highlight matches on screen, along with giving a little haptic nudge. Elsewhere, Lin wrote it’s possible to use LE audio features with hearing aids to “take calls on the go and access your hearing aid presets, as well as change your ambient volume through your Pixel phone settings.” This functionality is available on Pixel 9 and newer running Android 16, Google said.
Finally, Lin notes Google’s Expressive Captions accessibility feature has been updated so as to “capture elongated words” such as yessss—particularly useful with sporting events. Beyond the United States, Expressive Captions is available in Canada and the United Kingdom. I wrote about Expressive Captions late last year for my old Forbes column, as the feature first arrived on Android as part of the December 2024 Pixel Drop.
Google has posted a video to YouTube all about the June Pixel Drop.
The shoe is on the other foot, WWDC Edition
As I write this, it’s been exactly one week since I was on the ground at Apple Park in Cupertino to cover this year’s WWDC keynote. In the days since, the majority of the chatter online has surrounded Apple’s all-new design language called Liquid Glass. It’s been interesting to observe the discourse, mostly because a common refrain has been people complaining about things like contrast and readability. The first iOS 26 developer beta, the peanut gallery alleges, goes way too far in prioritizing the glass-like effects so as to be very detrimental towards legibility and other visual considerations.
In other words, iOS 26 Beta 1 has people talking about accessibility.
On one hand, I’m appreciative people are paying attention to the accessibility of Liquid Glass. More able-bodied people should pay attention to accessibility. I offer the caveat, however, the aforementioned beta is intended for software developers—WWDC is a developer-oriented event after all, with the public beta not slated to ship until next month—so it’s very early days in the testing cycle. There’s a whole summer yet for Apple to tweak and refine Liquid Glass before it’s officially released come September. The early returns on public opinion, at least what I’ve noticed on social media, fail to take into account that (a) Beta 1 is for developers; and (b) there’s time for improvements.
The umbrage from some people over the current state of Liquid Glass is eye-rolling enough, but what really gets my eyes rolling is how so many people who are running the beta are co-opting accessibility. These commenters are convinced Apple has turned its back on its ethos on accessibility by shipping Liquid Glass in iOS 26 in such a lackluster state by accessibility standards. I find the criticisms egregiously disingenuous; not because I devalue constructive criticism or believe Liquid Glass is bereft of problems, but because I believe people are tokenizing accessibility insofar as it suits their gripes.
Put another way, accessibility is ancillary… until it isn’t.
It’s rich. As I wrote on Mastodon last week, to see people invoke the accessibility argument is hilarious, if not somewhat infuriating, because people like me have been banging the proverbial drum on the topic over a decade now. Obviously, I’ve built my career in tech journalism by effectively creating my own beat in accessibility and assistive technologies. My lived experiences as a lifelong disabled person who copes with multiple conditions allows me to write authoritatively and expertly on the subject. I know this stuff, which is why I’m able to detect bullshit when I smell it. The majority of the time, accessibility coverage is confined to Global Accessibility Awareness Day or so-called “Accessibility Weeks.” There is no regular, daily coverage of disability at most newsrooms, especially at the old guard outlets like The New York Times, despite the fact disability deserves every ounce the limelight that gender, race, and sexuality get in contemporary social justice reporting. Similarly, the WWDC coverage I’ve seen makes no mention of the new accessibility features Apple announced last month—all of which are traditionally included in the platforms’ public releases. Of course Liquid Glass and iPadOS 26 are amongst the biggest pieces of news, but I say it’s downright journalistic malpractice to not at least add a sentence or two to one’s copy that macOS 26 Tahoe, for instance, gets the Magnifier for Mac feature, amongst others, later this year. You needn’t be an accessibility aesthete like myself to do the bare minimum in acknowledging Apple is giving users empowering new accessibility features too.
I’ve written about this phenomenon before. I don’t mean to be gatekeeper-y about accessibility, but the disability community deserves better than one-day-a-year shoutouts on blogs and podcasts, rife with “gee whiz, that’s great” platitudes. We deserve more recognition than what GAAD co-founder Joe Devon recently told me is our “364 days of global accessibility oblivion.” There’s zero reason, for example, an accessibility-focused iPhone review couldn’t run alongside the mainstream takes of journalists like my close friend and peer in Joanna Stern at The Wall Street Journal. Disabled people read the Journal and use iPhones too, so it makes perfect sense in my mind. It seemingly isn’t so to the people tasked with overseeing the WSJ’s tech desk.
(It’s me. I’m a disabled person who uses an iPhone and reads The Wall Street Journal.)
If nothing else, the handwringing over Liquid Glass and its current inaccessibility should prove enlightening to people if only because it shows that everyone can, and inevitably will, benefit from greater accessibility. As for Apple’s role vis-a-vis Liquid Glass, I will reiterate what I wrote last week by again saying Sarah Herrlinger, the company’s senior director of global accessibility policy and initiatives, indicated Liquid Glass was created to be accessible as possible and is simpatico with features such as Reduce Transparency. To suggest Apple has cratered its reputation on accessibility in the first developer beta of iOS 26 is categorically untrue and lacking common sense. My understanding has long been accessibility is on par with readying the new iPhones to ship as far as internal importance. The company’s efforts in accessibility is neither extraneous nor a lark; it’s a highly serious endeavor. Apple isn’t perfect in accessibility, of course, but to presume they purposely ignored accessibility in making Liquid Glass is to show a gross misunderstanding of a huge part of how the company thinks and works.
Let this be a lesson to journalists and users alike: accessibility fucking matters.
Apple Honors Speechify, Art of Fauna for accessibility at this year’s Apple Design Awards
At WWDC 2025 this week, Apple recognized this year’s Apple Design Award (ADA) winners. The Cupertino-based company celebrated a dozen apps and games for the honor, with one app and one game winning in six categories: Delight and Fun, Innovation, Interaction, Inclusivity, Social Impact, and Visuals and Graphics.
Pertinent to accessibility is, of course, the Inclusivity category. The winners here are Speechify and Art of Fauna. Speechify transforms written text in audio, with support of hundreds of voices and over 50 languages. The app also features robust support for iOS accessibility stalwarts in Dynamic Type and VoiceOver, and is an indispensable tool for anyone who copes with conditions such as ADHD, dyslexia, and/or low vision. Regarding Art of Fauna, made by Austria-based Klemens Strasser, the game is a conservation-themed puzzle title which incorporates wildlife imagery. The game tasks players with rearranging visual elements or pieces of descriptive text, with the game supporting accessibility by way of rich screen reader and haptic feedback support.
Apple announced the ADA finalists and winners earlier this month. The honorees spanned the globe and were chosen as winners because their work demonstrated “excellence in innovation, ingenuity, and technical achievement,” according to Apple.
“Developers continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible, creating apps and games that are not only beautifully designed but also deeply impactful,” Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of worldwide developer relations, said in a statement. “We’re excited to celebrate this incredible group of winners and finalists at WWDC and spotlight the innovation and craftsmanship they bring to each experience.”
On a related note, the physical trophy Apple gives to ADA winners is truly something to behold. The hardware is a dense, substantially weighty cube milled from a single piece of aluminum. I bring it up because, at last year’s WWDC, I got to see (and hold!) an ADA trophy for the first time. It happened during a briefing at Apple Park with the makers of Oko, an iPhone app which leverages artificial intelligence to make street-crossing more accessible to Blind and low vision people. The team had the cube proudly displayed on a coffee table during our discussion, after which they asked if I’d be interested in picking up the cube and feeling it. I’m sure there exists a picture of me somewhere.
The salient point? The ADA trophy has every bit the fit and finish of an iPhone or iPad.
Inside Unlimited Play’s Mission to Make sure ‘No Child is left on the sidelines’ at the playground
Take a gander at the homepage of Unlimited Play’s website and you’ll see the nonprofit organization makes an unequivocal proclamation: “At our playgrounds, no child is left on the sidelines.” Dig deeper and you’ll notice Unlimited Play’s philosophy that “no matter their physical or cognitive abilities, [children deserve] to feel welcome and experience the joy of play without barriers.” Make no mistake, adaptive playgrounds are shining examples of assistive technologies existing, quite literally, in the real world.
Unlimited Play’s origin story begins with a 3-year-old boy named Zachary Blakemore. He lived with a rare genetic condition known as Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease, or PMD, which required him to use a wheelchair. Blakemore, like any other kid, relished visiting the playground—the problem, however, was it was unbuilt for his needs. It was inaccessible. These experiences pushed Blakemore’s mom, Natalie Mackey, to start Unlimited Play in 2003. Four years and $750,000 later, the first inclusive space, aptly named Zachary’s Playground, opened in Lake Saint Louis, Missouri on April 21, 2007.
As Mackey told me recently, she never imagined Unlimited Play becoming a thing.
“We had reporters there that day [of Zachary Playground’s opening] and they asked me if I would continue the work into the future. I said, ‘Not a chance.’ It was four years of fundraising and I was excited to let other people follow what we had done,” she said. “But we’re talking today because families like mine and cities more and more have been calling to ask we help and continue the journey of providing inclusive play for everyone. We have over 100 projects from east coast to west coast, even into Canada. Every day, we’re contacted by families looking for ways to have their children play.”
It’s been over two decades now Mackey has served as the nonprofit’s founder and chief executive officer. She explained she’s worked with "so many families” while noting she and her team are “continually learning” along the way. Mackey shared an anecdote on a current project involving a boy named Teddy, who has dwarfism. Typical playgrounds, she told me, are inaccessible to him, adding Unlimited Play’s experience of working on his project has proven enlightening. “[It’s] taught us things about that population and how to better design playgrounds for individuals with dwarfism,” Mackey said.
When asked what exactly constitutes an adaptive and inclusive playground, Mackey said there are several elements. A lot of the design work is topographical, what with using soft turf on the ground, as well as ensuring wheelchair access by way of ramps and sidewalks. Similarly, communication boards are crucial for interaction, and the use of large type and bold colors can be beneficial for those with low vision. It’s quite the challenge, Mackey went on to tell me, to incorporate all these things while also bearing in mind typically developing children likely want to play along too. Everybody, she added, has their own needs and tolerances regardless of one’s ability level(s).
Of course, Unlimited Play constructing playgrounds isn’t like Apple constructing Apple Park. Unlike Apple, Mackey and Unlimited Play has not unlimited funds with which to procure everything needed to build these playgrounds. They need help, which Mackey and team found in the folks at Little Tikes Commercial. The subsidiary, a scaled-up offshoot of the children’s products company, manufacturers playground equipment—including inclusive ones like Zachary’s Playground. According to Mackey, Unlimited Play’s partnership with Little Tikes Commercial means her organization gains the ability to train “about 120 representatives” on the importance of inclusive play and, more pointedly, the ABCs of building accessible play-based environments. After said training, Mackey told me the trainees go out and effectively act as ambassadors to Unlimited Play; this enables the nonprofit to have “many more feet on the ground” doing this evangelism. Mackey’s role involves reporting to the Little Tikes team on the feedback she’s heard from communities “then work together to create new products,” she said.
To work with a well-known entity as Little Tikes is game-changing for Unlimited Play.
“I never imagined that any big company would care,” Mackey said. “Especially when my son was little, life felt very isolating… like nobody understood what I was going through and what I was desperately wanting to provide for my child. For Little Tikes Commercial to say, ‘We see you, we understand, and we want to be part of this’ was really exciting and meaningful for me. For a small nonprofit, it helps give credibility to our mission to say we have such a successful corporation believe in us and backing Unlimited Play.”
Looking towards the future, Mackey was succinct in sharing she hopes to continue pushing forward in fulfilling her organization’s mission. Ideally, she hopes playground standards are raised on a national level so as to reflect the needs of disabled children and their families. Mackey hopes this work raises enough awareness that it doesn’t always take a small-time nonprofit like Unlimited Play to do all the heavy lifting. More parks and recreation staffers should know kids like Zachary deserve open, welcoming, and accommodating spaces in which to play—the problem is most don’t recognize the barriers present in the majority of neighborhood playgrounds across America today.
Zachary died in September 2021, but his legacy lives on in his mom and her mission.
“I would say it’s important to tell people we must be creating environments where everyone can thrive at their very best,” Mackey said when asked to distill Unlimited Play’s raison d’être. “We grow as communities and grow as a nation. My son had a hard time doing typical things, but what he brought was so much. He brought creating environments where we all feel like we belong [and] we can all be our best… we only, as communities and nations, get better by doing that. Play, I truly believe, is the one language we all speak. It’s the international language we all spoke to begin with and how we learn from each other. We should care about creating environments that make that language possible for us to understand, grow, and develop even better.”
New ‘F1’ Trailer makes Movies More Accessible
Apple’s Greg Joswiak took to X earlier today to post about the new trailer Apple released for its upcoming Apple TV+ film F1. The executive, the company’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, describes what Apple calls a “haptic trailer” as “the coolest trailer ever”—and his boastfulness is deserved. I just watched the 2:10 preview, available in the TV app on iPhone and it is incredibly cool and, dare I say, innovative.
From an accessibility perspective, applying haptic feedback to movie trailers is a genius-level move. It brings a level of access and immersion that transcends sheer coolness, as Joswiak said. To wit, someone who’s Deaf or hard-of-hearing, or Blind or low vision, could literally feel the rumble of the cars as they race around the speedway. Likewise, even for someone with typical hearing and vision, the added sensory input makes for a richer experience because, once again, a person is able to have a tactile approximation of the cars’ horsepower. When I first read about the F1 trailer, my mind immediately recalled the similar-styled Music Haptics accessibility feature Apple introduced last year in iOS 18. I wrote about Music Haptics again recently, and the advent of Apple’s novel “haptic trailer” stands not only as yet another example of potential accessibility, but of the company’s vaunted vertical integration as well.
I hope the F1 creative team appreciates how cool this technology is. Especially for people with limited hearing, if any at all, that haptics are present in the trailer makes it such that the cars’ power can be felt if not heard. This is exactly the value proposition for Music Haptics; a Deaf person, like Troy Kotsur’s Frank Rossi in CODA, can enjoy music because, as he says in the film, it “makes my ass shake.” It isn’t merely a funny, throwaway line: haptic feedback makes ostensibly exclusionary arts like music more inclusive to the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community. I don’t know the nitty-gritty technical details on the F1 trailer, but it’d be great to see Apple someday release a public API for App Store developers to hook into their own app(s). Imagine, for instance, sitting down to watch Star Wars on Disney+ and being able to feel explosions or the rumble of lightsabers. Haptics makes the content not only more immersive—it’s accessible too.
The Brad Pitt-led F1 opens in theaters on June 27. It’ll stream on TV+ later this year.
It’s Official: Yours Truly Needs a new Mac Soon
Amidst this week’s hubbub regarding Liquid Glass and more, one tidbit of news has me feeling melancholy. The next version of macOS, named Tahoe, is the last edition to support Intel-based Macs. This is important news because, as I suspected, I’ll need to upgrade my Mac pretty soon. My trusty Retina 4K iMac from 2019, the 21.5-inch model, is sated to stay on Sequoia forevermore. You’ve served me with great honor, old friend.
According to Apple, macOS Tahoe is “the last release for Intel-based Mac computers,” adding the machines will get three years of security updates. The news coincides with the company’s plans to sunset its Rosetta 2 translation system, introduced in 2020 to help developers with transitioning their apps from Intel to Apple silicon. “Rosetta was designed to make the transition to Apple silicon easier, and we plan to make it available for the next two major macOS releases—through macOS 27—as a general-purpose tool for Intel apps to help developers complete the migration of their apps,” Apple says. “Beyond this timeframe, we will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks.”
As with my beta-testing strategy for this summer, I’m still contemplating which Mac should supplant my 4K iMac. I have lots of options; I love the all-in-one design of the iMac and its anchoring of my workspace, but am also enamored by a more modular setup headlined by something like the big and bright Pro Display XDR. On the mobile side, I’m tempted to turn the 13-inch M4 iPad Pro I got for my birthday last September into my “laptop” paired with the Magic Keyboard. I’m really excited for the forthcoming (and arguably overdue) Mac-like features coming to iPadOS 26. In terms of my main work setting, macOS, the jump to using an Apple silicon Mac full-time is tantalizing because of Apple silicon-exclusive features such as iPhone Mirroring, as well as a larger display, and other quality-of-life improvements like faster processing and stuff.
My birthday is coming up in September, so perhaps my present will be a new computer.
Apple’s ‘Liquid Glass’ won’t make the sky fall
I was on the ground yesterday at Apple Park covering this year’s WWDC keynote. The star of the show was Apple’s introduction of its all-new Liquid Glass design language. The company has a great session on Liquid Glass in the Developer app. I highly suggest watching it (and other sessions) on a big screen television through an Apple TV 4K; I did so last night on my 77-inch LG C3 OLED last night and it was a blast, if terminally nerdy.
I’m still trying to devise a plan of action for testing iOS 26, et al, throughout the summer. In full transparency, I’m one of those rare birds in tech media circles who neither run the developer betas nor the public betas of the new operating systems. I’m a terrible tester, although I usually do jump to the iOS public beta on my iPhone late in the summer closer to its official release come September. With the advent of Liquid Glass, however, I feel it’s in my best journalistic interest to prioritize testing at least one beta. As I told some Apple employees following the presentation, Liquid Glass truly is a de-facto accessibility feature unto itself. While it’s undoubtedly true Apple’s stated goals of creating cohesiveness and harmony are important to accessibility, the reality is what really matters is how Liquid Glass performs in a practical sense. Practicality entails legibility, contrast, and motion. For people with low vision—and people with 20/20 vision, for that matter—the choices Apple has made with Liquid Glass, the proverbial proof in the pudding lies in usability. All the flowery, romanticized marketing bluster regarding harmony means zippo if Liquid Glass isn’t readable. Personally, I find Liquid Glass to look damn cool and quite beautiful; nonetheless, I’m predisposed to be skeptical as a lifelong disabled person and thus was alarmed by some of what I saw in Apple’s marketing video. Fortunately, my fears were quickly allayed by high confidence in Apple’s track record in accessibility and confirmation that changes will be coming.
I connected with Sarah Herrlinger, Apple’s senior director of global accessibility policy and initiatives, for a few minutes after the keynote ended. It was decidedly not an official, on the record interview, but I can confidently report Herrlinger told me her teams worked in tandem with the design team to build Liquid Glass and make it as accessible as possible. To that end, she noted Liquid Glass works with features such as Reduce Transparency, amongst others, in increasing legibility. I’m sure I’ll have more to report in the coming weeks and months. For now, I’m willing to take Herrlinger at her word, along with the reporter’s grain of salt, that Liquid Glass is accessible unto itself.
As I write this, it’s been roughly 24 hours since Apple introduced Liquid Glass. In that time, the timelines across my myriad social media services have been insufferable. There are so many insipidly bad takes on Liquid Glass from wannabe Apple designers who are posting hot takes to feed into social media’s worst impulses. There’s absolutely room for constructive criticism—👋🏼, journalist here—but there’s also room for common sense. Apple released the first beta of its new platforms yesterday. There is a whole summer yet for the company to tweak and refine Liquid Glass. Of course Apple engineers must reach a degree of “doneness” when readying the beta builds, but they’re betas for a reason: they’re essentially unfinished. The software will evolve before being publicly released later this year. Back in 2013, iOS 7 similarly overshot on the usability vector before dialing back to the mean before its final release alongside the iPhone 5C and 5S in the fall. There’s no doubt in my mind iOS 26 and Liquid Glass will walk the very same path in 2025, so crying Chicken Little seems utterly pointless.
Finally, a cool little personal postscript to Monday’s announcement. My first WWDC was in 2013, the year iOS was first redesigned. 13 years later, I was literally at Apple Park watching iOS 26 getting its Liquid Glass redesign. As a friend said to me after the presentation ended, 13 plus 13 equals 26. All told, I think it’s nice symmetry all around.
How ventura Charted Course to tahoe and beyond
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman published his spoiler-filled report late this week wherein he reveals what Apple intends on unveiling at Monday’s WWDC25 keynote. Gurman has formed a habit of doing so, a practice my friend John Gruber described as “tradition.”
As with movies and TV shows, abstain from Gurman’s report if you dislike spoilers.
What caught my attention reading Gruber’s comments is the hotly-anticipated visual redesign of Apple’s platforms. Gurman first wrote about it back in March, saying Apple planned to make its myriad operating systems “look similar and more consistent” while adding styles differ widely in terms of iconography and more between platforms. He rightly pointed out said differences “can make it jarring to hop from one device to another.” Apple’s primary goal, Gurman said, is to prioritize consistency, design-wise.
This is the part that struck me hardest. As I said on Mastodon yesterday, the same people who are like kids on Christmas morning regarding the aforementioned design refresh are the exact same people who have bemoaned the redesigned macOS Settings app when it debuted a few years ago. The irony here is these people haven’t a clue they’re talking out of both sides of their mouth; there can be spirited debate surrounding Mac design idioms, as well as how much iOS should invade such entrenched territory, but macOS Settings blazed a trail. To wit, launch the Settings app on one’s Mac of choice and the inspiration is crystal clear: it looks highly similar to that on iOS and iPadOS. Why is that? The cynical view is to say it’s because Apple wants to deepen the so-called “iOS-ification” of the Mac, much the chagrin of diehards. The more charitable viewpoint, however—and I believe the more correct one—is Apple sought to provide (surprise, surprise!) more consistency and likeness between platforms. What the company reveals come Monday morning at Apple Park is taking that prior work on macOS Settings and expanding upon it such to scale it up big time.
Apple’s software engineering groups are bifurcated no longer. This isn’t the iPhone’s early era, circa 2007–2010, where the company built only two OSes: Mac OS X and iPhone OS. Since those days, the company has taken the core underpinnings of iOS and spooled off four more platforms in watchOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and visionOS—with rumors of yet another on the horizon. It makes complete sense for Apple to strive towards more “unity,” more consistency, across its panoply of platforms because the company makes a helluva lot more computers than it used to. I’ve long banged the drum that, from an accessibility standpoint, that Apple took iOS and pulled the proverbial string to build its progeny was a stroke of genius. Especially for people who cope with intellectual disabilities where cognition is atypical—however unstated, these are exactly the type of user Gurman alluded to this past spring—that iPadOS, watchOS, et al, look and behave so similarly to an iPhone is worth its weight in usability gold. It’s accessible in part because it’s consistent. Consistency should be lauded far more as a feature, not a bug. As I said earlier, the design snobs of the internet like to navel-gaze and gripe about idioms and implementation details. This kind of critique certainly does have its place, but particularly in context of the macOS Settings overhaul, the complainers routinely miss the forest for the trees. You’re free to niggle philosophical on Apple’s choices, but I’m here to tell you once more with feeling that accessibility matters. At 30,000 feet, that macOS Settings looks like iOS or whatever is a good thing for a not-insignificant swath of people in the disability community—anyone else’s precious pearl-clutching be damned. Likewise, that “iOS 26” and its compatriots will look and feel of a family is also a very good thing in the aggregate. For accessibility, the family resemblance is of crucial import when it comes to acclimation and comfort. That macOS Settings looks like iOS is a huge, if imperfect, win for legions of disabled people.
Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) co-founder Joe Devon was spot-on when he shared an anecdote in a recent interview with me about someone lamenting on social media about the “364 days of global accessibility oblivion.” So much attentionis paid to Apple’s annual GAAD announcement on blogs and podcasts, but so much of it smacks of tokenization and patronage. I bring this up because I can’t help but think were accessibility coverage more robust in the Apple sphere, it would be easier to connect the dots between, say, the redesigned macOS Settings app and the updates Apple is readying itself to announce next week. Alas, accessibility is more often than not relegated to 364 days of oblivion because the tech commentariat lack the perspective for it—and, even more frustratingly, the powers-that-be running the tech desks in newsrooms are apathetic towards seeking out the knowledge—with precious few exceptions. What you’re left with are people like myself, perpetually shouting into what feels like an ever-growing black hole with weekend think pieces such as this one.
Anyway, I’ll be in Cupertino on Monday covering all the news from the WWDC keynote.
PlayStation Store Gains support for Apple Pay
On my way home from a brief reporting trip/vacation in the Pacific Northwest, I came across this X post on Sony’s official PlayStation account sharing news that Apple Pay now is a supported payment method on the PlayStation Store for PS4 and PS5. Sony’s post includes a link to this support document with information on how to use Apple Pay.
Sony emphasizes one must ensure Apple Pay is set up for use on their iPhone or other iOS device, as well as there are valid payment methods saved to their Apple account.
News of the PlayStation Store adopting support Apple Pay grabbed my attention as Apple Pay certainly will make purchasing games more accessible. I’ve extolled the accessibility virtues of Apple Pay innumerable times over the years, and use it every chance I get—whether in a brick-and-mortar store or online. In case of the PlayStation Store, the irony here is my PlayStation 5 model is the disc version; most times, I tend to prefer disc-based games to their digital likenesses. This mindset is more sentimental than practical, as I also have a Mega Sg console alongside a cavalcade of game cartridges. My gaming heyday coincided with the Nintendo NES and Sega Genesis, coupled with mobile consoles like the Game Boy and Game Gear. What this means is I’m virtually hardwired to insert (and remove) physical media, (in)accessibility be damned. Ditto for DVDs and Blu-rays. Call it nostalgia—or negligence, given my affinity towards, and need for, greater accessibility—but there’s just something about physical game media. More ironic is my Xbox Series S can only download games from the internet.
Anyway, there lies a schism in my media. Sony’s announcement reminded me of that.
I may need a new Mac Soon, Report Suggests
If this rumor becomes reality, the end is nigh for my trusty iMac.
I became a bit crestfallen today when I read this report by MacRumors’ Hartley Charlton, who cites a report from AppleInsider, that the forthcoming update to macOS—macOS 26; more below—drops support for five older Macs. Charlton says the 2017 iMac Pro, 2018 MacBook Air, 2018 Mac mini, 2020 Intel-based MacBook Air, as well as my aforementioned Retina 4K iMac, all are (purportedly) incompatible with the new version.
I’d love to know how many words I’ve churned out on this machine in the nearly 6 years I’ve had it. This iMac came to me in 2019, which feels almost quite literally like a lifetime ago now. It was a few months after I had a personal tragedy, and a few months into becoming a pig parent. The pandemic was several months away, unbeknownst to me and the rest of the planet. In 2019, I was covering Apple exclusively; the powers-that-be at Forbes at the time wouldn’t approach me about joining its invite-only contributor network until close to Halloween. At the time, I never would’ve dreamed I’d be on the verge of career opportunities that would eventually push my reporting into the stratosphere. My Forbes column opened those doors for me, and I’ll forever be grateful.
All the while, my iMac has been here to see me through it all.
I don’t mean to wax overly poetic about a computer. I know electronics have only a finite lifespan, and it appears increasingly likely that it will reach its end—defined by the stoppage of support for the latest software—which makes it befitting that I eulogize my iMac in advance. I’ve been thinking about upgrading my desk setup for some time now, especially lusting over the also-new-in–2019 Pro Display XDR with either a docked MacBook or perhaps a Mac mini of some sort. As someone whose work primarily involves videoconferencing and plain text files for writing, my spartan compute needs belie my nerdy desire for beefier hardware like the tricked-out Mac Studio my friend and former collaborator Federico Viticci has been testing lately. I’m still weighing my options for my next move, but suffice it to say I’ve greatly enjoyed the all-in-one lifestyle afforded by my iMac. I like that I have a central, dedicated location for work and thus I’m (tentatively) inclined to make a lateral move to the latest one. At the very least, I’m enthused by the prospect of using an Apple silicon-based Mac as my daily driver, despite my Intel iMac still being more than capable of doing what I need for my job.
Okay, about “macOS 26.” Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has a helluva scoop this week in which he reports Apple plans to change the versioning scheme for its platforms to reflect calendar years instead of version numbers. Lots of people on the internet have taken umbrage over the decision, some asininely so, but I think the reaction is a show of humanity’s adverseness to change. As I said on Mastodon yesterday, EA Sports has used the decades-old practice, dating back to the heyday of the Sega Genesis, to use the upcoming calendar year for its games. For example, the company’s college football title, College Football ’26, is due to come out on July 10 of 2025 and no one is batting an eye. Ditto for its pro game, Madden ’26, out August 14. From an accessibility point of view, it should prove easier for those with intellectual disabilities to know their software is current because it’s based in years. Even for the “normal” non-nerds in people’s lives, the change should be easier to grok; not many of my family and friends are inclined to dive into Settings → General → About to see their iPhone is running iOS 18.5.
As for me, I’m inclined to say I’ll have a new Mac for macOS 26 when it drops this fall.
Inside AXS Labs’ Mission to make the Real world a more accessible place to All disabled People
Two decades have passed since Jason DaSilva was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) at age 25. A filmmaker known for works such as 2013’s When I Walk, DaSilva explained during an interview last week he was “able-bodied” back in 2005 when doctors informed him of his MS diagnosis. He was living in New York City and began noticing problems with walking and blurry vision. DaSilva has primary progressive multiple sclerosis, or PPMS. It’s described by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society as “an unpredictable disease of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain and between the brain and body,” adding “if you have PPMS, you will experience gradually worsening neurologic symptoms and an accumulation of disability [and] you will not have relapses early in the disease course. You also will not have remissions.” 10% to 15% of people have DaSilva’s type of MS.
“I didn’t know what to do,” DaSilva said of the aftermath of getting his diagnosis. “Then I worked on a couple more films, then turned it around and said, ‘Well, what I really should do is continue my career, but in a way that embraces the MS I have now.’”
What he chose to do was launch a nonprofit organization called AXS Labs. On its website, AXS Labs says its mission is devoted to “building tools, telling the stories of accessibility and inclusion through media, journalism, news and technology [and] [serving] people with disabilities through media and technology.” DaSilva told me his organization’s first project is the eponymously named AXS Map. The impetus for AXS Maps, is obviously accessibility; as a disabled person, DaSilva has long lamented the lack of maps which cater to the disability community. There are “all these maps from Google and Yelp,” but none truly dedicated to providing crucial inclusionary information on accommodations such as wheelchair access and more. DaSilva was resolute in his belief such a tool “needs to be done,” so that’s what he and his team did. AXS Map isn’t new, with work beginning in 2010 before launching to the public two years later.
“[AXS Maps] has been going ever since,” DaSilva said. “We have a big database now, but it’s been going since 2012.”
DaSilva reiterated the sore need for something like AXS Map to exist for the disability community and its allies. He again lamented how there are apps like the aforementioned Yelp, replete with listings and reviews of businesses near and far, but skimps on accessibility information for people like himself—and yours truly, for that matter. Even now, such information remains sparse, but DaSilva said the work is evergreen. AXS Map has grown considerably in 13 years, with the software reaching a point where “we have so many reviews… we keep going and creating new things.”
DaSilva shared an anecdote about living in Manhattan’s East Village and wanting to go to a bar or restaurant. A wheelchair user, DaSilva would venture out for the proverbial night on the town on Friday nights with friends only to sullenly discover a place would have stairs or steps, making it harder to get in, if at all. Many times, it would be downright impossible and the night would end prematurely because of inaccessibility.
“I said, ‘Well, this is obviously a need that needs to be dealt with from a personal perspective,’” DaSilva said. “But I realized it was [also] something that could help a lot of people with whatever they need in terms of accessibility.”
In a technical terms, AXS Map’s data is based on the Google Places API. According to DaSilva, “any place on Google is going to be available on [AXS Map] as long as they’re a business that’s registered with Google.” He emphasized the notion that AXS Maps stands to “provide another layer of information” which Google may not have, calling accessibility information “critical” for so many like himself and others. In fact, lots of disabled people have expressed gratitude to DaSilva and team for offering such an invaluable tool; DaSilva said people are excited to learn AXS Map exists and subsequently are excited to spread the good word about it to everyone else out there.
“It’s something that needed to be done, but there was no way for people to actually do it,” DaSilva said of the motivation to build AXS Maps. “That’s it. I saw something that I could pull the trigger on and get the word out there.”
He continued: “People really like that [AXS Map] exists. I get a lot of feedback from people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to go to places. They wouldn’t know if they’re accessible or not, so AXS Maps really helps.”
As to the effectualness of AXS Map to people’s everyday lives, DaSilva told me it boils down to two things. One, the software allows people to talk about whether places they know are accessible (or not). And two, it enables people to be explorers by pushing them to venture to new parts of their neighborhood or city. “Even if they go to a new city, there are some places they wouldn’t have otherwise known about,” DaSilva said.
In a broad scope, DaSilva said it’s his experience that an increasing number of businesses have become disability-friendly over the years. In New York City, he noted the bar is “certainly getting higher” for prioritizing accessibility—but caveated a big barrier is infrastructure. Most buildings there, he told me, are legacy and thus pretty old; this means their very construction means upgrading to make them “ADA-friendly,” as the colloquialism goes, is a slow (and expensive) process for city leaders and their budgets. But it isn’t an issue solely confined to New York, as DaSilva also cited other east coast metros such as Philadelphia and Toronto also slogging through relative inaccessibility largely because they, too, are older cities filled with older buildings.
However problematic buildings are, DaSilva finds people are keen to help him.
“They’re helpful as they can be,” he said. “They’re helpful… they tell me where to go to [and] tell me if it’s an accessible place. They tell me if they have another entryway or whatever the case may be. They do as much as they can do for me.”
Looking towards the future for AXS Labs, DaSilva said AXS Map in particular is more “database” than anything else. He’s scheduled to soon give a presentation to the United Nations on AXS Maps: how it works and how best to use it. His talk coincides with the UN’s Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities. Beyond AXS Map, he’s also poised to discuss how artificial intelligence can positively impact the lives of disabled people and how AXS Map fits into the ever-burgeoning era of AI. The technology, he added, has enormous potential to not only map accessible places, but help people in the community get to those places. What’s more, the “robots,” as DaSilva characterized AI, could go in and verify whether places are accessible or not.
PopSockets Announces Kick-Out Grip and stand
MacRumors’ Joe Rossignol reports this week PopSockets has released its newest product, the Kick-Out grip and stand for iPhone. The $40 accessory, which supports Apple’s MagSafe technology, is touted by PopSockets as “[rocking] multiple angles.”
“Unlike other PopSockets, the Kick-Out model offers the long-awaited ability to prop up an iPhone in a vertical Portrait Mode position. This added functionality is useful for watching vertical videos in apps like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube,” Rossignol wrote in describing the new accessory. “You can twist the built-in MagSafe ring, and then pop open the hinged stand to prop up the iPhone horizontally or vertically on a table.”
Seeing this news immediately took my mind to my interview late last year with PopSockets’ chief executive officer Jiayu Lin. Lin, who’s coming up on her 1-year anniversary leading the company, told me in part PopSockets “[sits] at the intersection of fashion and functionality.” My conversation with Lin coincided with the announcement that PopSockets worked with Apple such that the Cupertino-based captain of industry exclusively carry a collection of MagSafe phone grips in both its online store and retail outposts. According to Lin, PopSockets was “really excited” about the opportunity to work closely with Apple to reach “a new generation of customers,” adding it was a big step towards “forming strong relationships with partners and collaborators and [finding] new ways to get the brand into new locations.”
As I wrote in November—editorializing is a key part of reporting on accessibility, in my strong opinion—PopSockets’ origin story indeed lies in accessibility. Back in 2010, company founder David Barnett, who last fall handed the proverbial reins to Lin to be the company’s next chief executive, grew frustrated by his EarPods’ cords becoming tangled, so he decided to concoct a DIY remedy by gluing two buttons to the back of his phone before wrapping the cord around them. A Kickstarter project followed in 2012, with Barnett directing the money generated from the successfully-funded campaign to humbly start PopSockets from his Boulder, Colorado garage over a decade ago, in 2014.
Lin extolled PopSockets’ virtues by highlighting its position sitting at the intersection of fashion and functionality. As ever, it’s about something else: accessibility. Not only does the grippy nature make it easier to hold and prop up on a table, both especially important to those with muscle tone problems, the MagSafe integration makes it such that applying (or removing) the PopSocket itself is more accessible by virtue of the laws of physics. Ergo, a product like the aforementioned Kick-Out may well be immensely appealing to someone who copes with motor disabilities. In fact, as someone who does have motor disabilities, grip and friction are the primary reasons I insist on using a case on my iPhones. A case may obstruct from admiring the industrial design, but it’s a price I must pay for usability’s sake. Such is life for a nerd who lives with multiple conditions.
PopSockets’ new Kick-Out grip is available on its website now.