89: Low Vision Pro

Today, we offer an all-star panel of podcasters and tech pundits with a lot to say about the first 15 years of mobile accessibility from Apple. To my delight, the show veered hard into present and future topics. Also, Parallel says farewell.

What are the takeaways from Global Accessibility Awareness Day #GAAD 2024? We highlight accessibility announcements from Apple and BeMyEyes.

Zoe Knox bought a Vision Pro when they first became available, anticipating that Apple's headset would provide accessibility features. How those features might work with Zoe's low vision? That was a big unknown.

Apple's Vision Pro headset offers a number of accessibility features. But how well do they serve those with disabilities, and what should we expect from future versions of the product? Now we have some answers.

I spoke with Steven Scott and Shaun Preece for their show, Double Tap. They wanted my thoughts on how Apple's Vision Pro might land with users who have low vision. Steven kindly gave me permission to republish that conversation here.

How a young entrepreneur turned her own technology need into an app designed for other people with low-vision.

What's the significance of Apple's iPhone 15 lineup, from an accessibility point of view?

Andrew Leland's memoir "The Country of the Blind" tells a story about his ongoing journey into vision loss. It's also a kind of history of blindness, and blindness technology, with stops along the way to unpack the literary deployments of vision loss by other writers. He talked with me about the book, about the technology he uses, and some of his encounters with people made uncomfortable by low-vision.

Even before ChatGPT brought AI into the mainstream of collective consciousness, companies touted artificial intelligence as a way to make your web site accessible – a magic bullet that meant web devs could skip the accessibility checks normally done by humans. And technologies like computer vision had brought AI into devices and image software. Today's guest has a few bones to pick with what marketers call AI, and some good things to say about computer vision.

My colleagues from the Maccessibility Roundtable join me for a conversation about Apple's Vision Pro and accessibility. We still don't know a lot, but be know more than we did an hour after the WWDC keynote.