Podcast appearances and mentions of sarah herrlinger

Sarah Herrlinger, senior director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives d'Apple, était l'invitée de François Sorel dans Tech & Co, la quotidienne, ce mercredi 18 juin. Elle est revenue sur l'accessibilité chez Apple sur BFM Business. Retrouvez l'émission du lundi au jeudi et réécoutez-la en podcast.

In this AppleVis Extra episode, David Nason and Thomas Domville (AnonyMouse) interview Sarah Herrlinger, senior director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple. They explore Apple's ongoing dedication to accessibility, spotlighting exciting new features designed to better support users with disabilities. The conversation covers several highlights, including Accessibility Nutrition Labels, Braille Access Mode, Magnifier for Mac, and the role of AI in accessibility enhancements.Key Highlights:Accessibility Nutrition LabelA new initiative that provides standardized accessibility info for apps.Developers will showcase features like VoiceOver and captions.Designed to increase awareness and help users easily find accessibility details.Braille Access ModeAvailable on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro.Enables quick note-taking, calculations, and BRF file access with Braille displays.Supports live captioning for DeafBlind users to improve communication.Magnifier for MacTurns your iPhone into a magnifier for Mac users.Uses a secondary camera to enlarge physical objects.Includes zoom, color filters, brightness controls, and OCR with text-to-speech via Accessibility Reader.AI and AccessibilityAI remains a vital tool in accessibility advancements.Enhances image recognition and descriptive capabilities.Continues to be integrated to improve experiences for visually impaired users.User Engagement and FeedbackHighlights the value of user feedback in shaping accessibility features.Encourages users to send suggestions to accessibility@apple.com.Share Accessibility SettingsA new feature lets users temporarily transfer their accessibility settings to another device.Makes it easier for family members to help with troubleshooting and tech support.Listeners are invited to share their thoughts on these features and suggest any other accessibility needs they'd like Apple to consider.TranscriptDisclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI Note Taker – VoicePen, an AI-powered transcription app. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers' names, voices, or content.Dave: Hello there, and welcome to another episode of the AppleVis Extra. My name is David Mason, and I am delighted to be joined once again by Thomas Domville, also known as AnonyMouse, of course. And this is an exciting episode that we, I want to say, annually, semi-annually do, and that is an interview with Apple's Global Head of Accessibility, Sarah Herrlinger. So, looking forward to this one, Thomas.Thomas: Right. I mean, you're right. That is a mouthful. What is your, I had to look that up. Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives. I'm like, wow. I wonder if that actually fits on her business card in one line. There's no way. They only respond so small.…

In this special Global Accessibility Awareness Day edition of Double Tap, Steven and Shaun are joined by top voices in tech accessibility, including Matt Ater from Vispero, Mike Buckley from Be My Eyes, Patrick Long from InnoSearch, and Apple's Director of Accessibility, Sarah Herrlinger.Matt shares news of Vispero's global rollout of accessible payment terminals powered by JAWS for Kiosk, and reflects on 30 years of JAWS development in partnership with Microsoft. Meanwhile, Be My Eyes and InnoSearch announce a new collaboration, offering 2% cashback for accessible shopping and a voice-based AI shopping assistant for non-tech users.Apple's Sarah Herrlinger unveils a suite of upcoming accessibility features, including Braille Access for note-taking, Magnifier for Mac, AI-powered object recognition in Vision Pro, and new Accessibility Nutrition Labels in the App Store. The show also features GAAD co-founder Joe Devon recounting how the movement began and why the mission continues.Chapters0:00 – Introduction4:40 – JAWS for Kiosk expands globally7:03 – Celebrating 30 years of JAWS and Microsoft's role9:23 – AI Labeler and Picture Smart in JAWS13:40 – Insert+J Club and JAWS community engagement14:52 – Be My Eyes and InnoSearch partnership announcement20:37 – InnerSearch's accessible shopping evolution33:44 – Origins of Global Accessibility Awareness Day with Joe Devon41:49 – Apple Vision Pro accessibility features44:14 – Braille Access and new note-taking tools46:24 – App Store Accessibility Labels explained51:01 – Magnifier for Mac and Accessibility ReaderRelevant LinksApple Accessibility: https://www.apple.com/accessibilityBe My Eyes: https://www.bemyeyes.comVispero: https://www.vispero.comInnoSearch: https://www.innosearch.ai/Global Accessibility Awareness Day: https://accessibility.dayGet in touch with us by email at feedback@doubletaponair.com or connect on WhatsApp at https://www.doubletaponair.com/whatsapp Find Double Tap online: YouTube, Double Tap Website---Follow on:YouTube: https://www.doubletaponair.com/youtubeX (formerly Twitter): https://www.doubletaponair.com/xInstagram: https://www.doubletaponair.com/instagramTikTok: https://www.doubletaponair.com/tiktokThreads: https://www.doubletaponair.com/threadsFacebook: https://www.doubletaponair.com/facebookLinkedIn: https://www.doubletaponair.com/linkedin Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://www.doubletaponair.com/appleSpotify: https://www.doubletaponair.com/spotifyRSS: https://www.doubletaponair.com/podcastiHeadRadio: https://www.doubletaponair.com/iheart About Double TapHosted by the insightful duo, Steven Scott and Shaun Preece, Double Tap is a treasure trove of information for anyone who's blind or partially sighted and has a passion for tech. Steven and Shaun not only demystify tech, but they also regularly feature interviews and welcome guests from the community, fostering an interactive and engaging environment. Tune in every day of the week, and you'll discover how technology can seamlessly integrate into your life, enhancing daily tasks and experiences, even if your sight is limited. "Double Tap" is a registered trademark of Double Tap Productions Inc.

In this episode of Double Tap, hosts Steven Scott and Shaun Preece reflect on the significance of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.Our main interview today however focuses on a major milestone for Apple, as in 2025 they celebrate 40 years of providing accessibility to disabled people. Global Head of Accessibility at the company, Sarah Herrlinger, joins Steven Scott to discuss the changes that have come in over the years and where accessibility is today in 2024.Get in touch with Double Tap by emailing us feedback@doubletaponair.com or by call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also now contact us via Whatsapp on 1-613-481-0144 or visit doubletaponair.com/whatsapp to connect. We are also across social media including X, Mastodon and Facebook. Double Tap is available daily on AMI-audio across Canada, on podcast worldwide and now on YouTube.Chapter Markers:00:00 Intro14:50 Listener Email: Braille Publishing Challenges20:52 Listener Email: Reflections on Sight Village Event23:36 Listener Email: The Glide Experience and Guide Dogs27:24 Listener Email: Innovations in Assistive Technology30:26 Celebrating 40 Years of Apple Accessibility with Sarah Herrlinger

Retired federal judge David S. Tatel, Apple's Sarah Herrlinger and 'Be My Eyes' CEO Mike Buckley discuss how AI and other technologies have created new tools for people with disabilities. Then, Dakota State University president José-Marie Griffiths and AFL-CIO Technology Institute executive director Amanda Ballantyne assess how automation has changed the workforce and the role of education. Conversation recorded on Thursday, March 21, 2024.

With over 20 years of experience at Apple, senior director of Global Accessibility Sarah Herrlinger joins us in studio for a conversation about how the disability community has advanced technology which has benefited everyone and if you're using an iPhone especially you! Think 'Siri' The forerunner for text-to-speech software was developed by a Silicon Valley inventor in association with the National Federation of the Blind to help the blind with some of their tasks and even text messages were invented as a way for deaf people to communicate with one another without speaking. In addition to the pursuit of inclusion Sarah spills the BEST advice to businesses when it comes to the monetary value of including customers with disabilities in their marketing and customer vision. Watch this episode with captions in 4K here: https://youtu.be/jYN0BWXvNJg Join the 10,000+ legends on Instagram: @ListenABLE_ Podcast https://www.instagram.com/listenable_podcast/ Grab our first merch release at our website From Your Pocket https://fromyourpocket.com.au/work/listenable/merch Recorded, edited and produced by Angus' Podcast Company  https://fromyourpocket.com.au/    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Wednesday! We are still in Vegas hanging out at the Reuters Events Automotive Retail Conference. Today we look into Elon Musk changing his tune on advertising and Apple announcing some core new accessibility features that may make it easier (and more fun) for everyone to use the iPhone.In an unexpected twist, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, announced plans to advertise Teslas despite his well stated disdain for advertising. Pressure to boost investor confidence amidst a challenging economic climate and increased competition in the electric vehicle market In 2019, Musk tweeted that he "hates advertising" and "We use that money to make the product great.""So I guess I should say advertising is awesome, and everyone should do it," Musk said at Tesla's annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas. "We will try out a little advertising and see how it goes."In release notes targeting better accessibility, Apple includes a feature set that will allow an iPhone to clone a user's voice after about 15 minutes of prompt reading.The feature is meant to give those who have lost their ability to speak to type into a phone and have the onboard Live Speech to mimic their voice.Additionally, Apple is releasing features to enhance accessibility for users by creating less vibrant experiences with simpler UI and cleaner color palettes. “Accessibility is part of everything we do at Apple,” Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's senior director of global accessibility policy and initiatives, said in a statement. “These groundbreaking features were designed with feedback from members of disability communities every step of the way, to support a diverse set of users and help people connect in new ways.”Get the Daily Push Back email at https://www.asotu.com/ JOIN the conversation on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asotu/ Read our most recent email at: https://www.asotu.com/media/push-back-email ASOTU Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/automotivestateoftheunion

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Thomas Domville are joined by Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple; and Dean Hudson, Accessibility Evangelist at Apple. Topics covered in this podcast include a look at some of the new accessibility features coming later this year to Apple's platforms, as well as a broader look at Apple's approach to making their products accessible to as many people as possible.Full transcript of podcastPlease note, This transcript was created solely for communication access. It is not a certified legal transcript and is not entirely verbatim.Audio: An AppleVis original.Dave: Hello and welcome to the AppleVis Extra Podcast. My name is Dave Nason, and I am joined by Mr. Thomas Domville. How are you, Tom?Thomas: I'm doing great, Dave. It's good to be with you again. This is going to be a fun podcast,.Dave: Yeah, this is one of our more exciting podcasts that we get to do every now and then. We didn't do it last year, but we did it two or three years before that, and they're back. It's Sarah Herrlinger and Dean Hudson from Apple's accessibility team. Great to have them back.Thomas: I know, right. It's been a couple years, so I can't wait to see what they have to say and offer to us in terms of accessibility for this year. I'm pretty excited.Dave: Is there anything in particular that stood out for you before we jump into it?Thomas: I know everybody in the community has been talking about the new voices, especially, Eloquence. But voices, I think that's probably the biggest hit out there to date. Would you agree with that?Dave: Yeah, I think so. I think it's definitely been the biggest news of this year's cycle, so yeah. Let's see what they have to say about that. Should we go ahead and jump into it?Thomas: Yeah. Let's do it.Dave: Sarah and Dean, you are so welcome back to the AppleVis Podcast. Thanks for coming.Dean: Thank you.Sarah: Well, thank you guys very much. It's wonderful to be here.Dave: Yeah, it's been two years, I think. We missed last year, but it was great. So it's great to have you back and talking about everything that's new in the accessibility world with Apple.Dean: Wow. Two years-Sarah: Yes. I-Dean: ... that's very quick.Sarah: I know. I was just thinking the same thing. It feels like the tumultuous nature of the last two years through a wrench into everything down to even doing podcasts. So it's great to be back with you guys.Dave: Absolutely. And I'm guessing this was probably the first WWDC this year at a few years where you actually had people as well.Sarah: It was, we had a hybrid model this year, but did kick it off with the keynote and the state of the union. And some of those major things, the design awards that go on on day one were done in a way to have more people available on campus. So it was a great opportunity to reconnect with a lot of developers and share the message of accessibility.Dave: Yeah. Amazing. And there is lots to talk about in accessibility. Thomas, I think you'd agree with me here that one of the biggest stories that's happened since voiceover itself even launched, all those…

Your smartphone can see, hear, and speak—even if you can't. So it occurred to the engineers at Apple and Microsoft: Can the phone be a talking companion for anyone with low vision, describing what it's seeing in the world around you?Today, it can. Thanks to some heavy doses of machine learning and augmented reality, these companies' apps can identify things, scenes, money, colors, text, and even people (“30-year-old man with brown hair, smiling, holding a laptop—probably Stuart”)—and then speak, in words, what's in front of you, in a photo or in the real world. In this episode, the creators of these astonishing features reveal how they turned the smartphone into a professional personal describer—and why they care so deeply about making it all work.Guests: Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO. Saqib Shaikh, project lead for Microsoft's Seeing AI app. Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Chief Accessibility Officer, Microsoft. Ryan Dour, accessibility engineer, Apple. Chris Fleizach, Mobile Accessibility Engineering Lead, Apple. Sarah Herrlinger, Senior Director of Global Accessibility, Apple.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this episode of Picture This, we feature the final installment of a panel discussion from the ACB Conference and Convention.  Carl Richardson, Co-Chair of the Audio Description Project, speaks with representatives from the major streaming services to discuss their products, services, programming, and offerings.  Featured guests include Melanie Goodman from Hulu, Martha Heller from CBS Viacom and Paramount+, Sarah Herrlinger from Apple, Mirka Pavlikova from Disney Studios, Allison Smith from Netflix, Andrew Larkin from HBO MAX, Thomas Wlodkowski from Peacock, and Daniel Kocmarek from Prime Video.  To leave feedback, suggestions, or ideas for a future podcast, please get in touch with the Picture This team by emailing your comments to or leave a voicemail at 857-302-2817.  We may use your email or voicemail in a future episode.

On this episode of Picture This, we feature the final installment of a panel discussion from the ACB Conference and Convention.  Carl Richardson, Co-Chair of the Audio Description Project, speaks with representatives from the major streaming services to discuss their products, services, programming, and offerings.  Featured guests include Melanie Goodman from Hulu, Martha Heller from CBS Viacom and Paramount+, Sarah Herrlinger from Apple, Mirka Pavlikova from Disney Studios, Allison Smith from Netflix, Andrew Larkin from HBO MAX, Thomas Wlodkowski from Peacock, and Daniel Kocmarek from Prime Video.  To leave feedback, suggestions, or ideas for a future podcast, please get in touch with the Picture This team by emailing your comments to or leave a voicemail at 857-302-2817.  We may use your email or voicemail in a future episode.

On this episode of Picture This, we feature the final installment of a panel discussion from the ACB Conference and Convention.  Carl Richardson, Co-Chair of the Audio Description Project, speaks with representatives from the major streaming services to discuss their products, services, programming, and offerings.  Featured guests include Melanie Goodman from Hulu, Martha Heller from CBS Viacom and Paramount+, Sarah Herrlinger from Apple, Mirka Pavlikova from Disney Studios, Allison Smith from Netflix, Andrew Larkin from HBO MAX, Thomas Wlodkowski from Peacock, and Daniel Kocmarek from Prime Video.  To leave feedback, suggestions, or ideas for a future podcast, please get in touch with the Picture This team by emailing your comments to or leave a voicemail at 857-302-2817.  We may use your email or voicemail in a future episode.

Episode Description On this episode of the ACB Advocacy Update, we feature the second installment of a panel discussion from the ACB Conference and Convention. Carl Richardson, co-Chair of ACB's Audio Description Project speaks with representatives from major streaming services to discuss their product's, programming, services, and offerings. Featured guests include: Melanie Goodman, HULU; Martha Heller, Viacom CBS, Paramount+; Sarah Herrlinger, Apple, TV+; Daniel Kocmarek, Sr., Amazon, Prime Video; Mirka Pavlikova, Walt Disney Studios, Disney+; Allison Smith, Netflix; Andy Larkin, HBO Max; & Thomas Wlodkowski, Comcast, Peacock. If you enjoy the ACB Advocacy Update, please consider becoming a member and donating to support our initiatives, like the Audio Description Project.

Streaming Services and Audio Description, Part I On this episode of Picture This, we feature the first installment of a panel discussion from the ACB Conference and Convention.  Carl Richardson, Co-Chair of the Audio Description Project, speaks with representatives from the major streaming services to discuss their products, services, programming, and offerings.  Featured guests include Melanie Goodman from Hulu, Martha Heller from CBS Viacom and Paramount+, Sarah Herrlinger from Apple, Mirka Pavlikova from Disney Studios, Allison Smith from Netflix, Andrew Larkin from HBO MAX, Thomas Wlodkowski from Peacock, and Daniel Kocmarek from Prime Video.  To leave feedback, suggestions, or ideas for a future podcast, please get in touch with the Picture This team by emailing your comments to or leave a voicemail at 857-302-2817.  We may use your email or voicemail in a future episode.

Streaming Services and Audio Description, Part I On this episode of Picture This, we feature the first installment of a panel discussion from the ACB Conference and Convention.  Carl Richardson, Co-Chair of the Audio Description Project, speaks with representatives from the major streaming services to discuss their products, services, programming, and offerings.  Featured guests include Melanie Goodman from Hulu, Martha Heller from CBS Viacom and Paramount+, Sarah Herrlinger from Apple, Mirka Pavlikova from Disney Studios, Allison Smith from Netflix, Andrew Larkin from HBO MAX, Thomas Wlodkowski from Peacock, and Daniel Kocmarek from Prime Video.  To leave feedback, suggestions, or ideas for a future podcast, please get in touch with the Picture This team by emailing your comments to or leave a voicemail at 857-302-2817.  We may use your email or voicemail in a future episode.

Streaming Services and Audio Description, Part I On this episode of Picture This, we feature the first installment of a panel discussion from the ACB Conference and Convention.  Carl Richardson, Co-Chair of the Audio Description Project, speaks with representatives from the major streaming services to discuss their products, services, programming, and offerings.  Featured guests include Melanie Goodman from Hulu, Martha Heller from CBS Viacom and Paramount+, Sarah Herrlinger from Apple, Mirka Pavlikova from Disney Studios, Allison Smith from Netflix, Andrew Larkin from HBO MAX, Thomas Wlodkowski from Peacock, and Daniel Kocmarek from Prime Video.  To leave feedback, suggestions, or ideas for a future podcast, please get in touch with the Picture This team by emailing your comments to or leave a voicemail at 857-302-2817.  We may use your email or voicemail in a future episode.

Episode Notes On this episode of the ACB Advocacy Update, we feature the first installment of a panel discussion from the ACB Conference and Convention. Carl Richardson, co-Chair of ACB's Audio Description Project speaks with representatives from major streaming services to discuss their product's, programming, services, and offerings. Featured guests include: Melanie Goodman, HULU; Martha Heller, Viacom CBS, Paramount+; Sarah Herrlinger, Apple, TV+; Daniel Kocmarek, Sr., Amazon, Prime Video; Mirka Pavlikova, Walt Disney Studios, Disney+; Allison Smith, Netflix; Andy Larkin, HBO Max; & Thomas Wlodkowski, Comcast, Peacock. If you enjoy the ACB Advocacy Update, please consider becoming a member and donating to support our initiatives, like the Audio Description Project.

Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD)! We are excited to have Sarah Herrlinger of Apple and Christopher Patnoe of Google on Inform & Connect, the American Foundation for the Blind's podcast. Both Sarah and Christopher sit on AFB's Board of Trustees. The conversation, led by AFB Major Gifts Specialist Melody Goodspeed, focuses on AFB's centennial, technology and inclusion, testing products, and their role as AFB board members. They will also touch upon Teach Access, a collaboration among education, industry, and disability advocacy organizations to address the critical need to enhance students' understanding of digital accessibility as they learn to design, develop, and build new technologies with the needs of people with disabilities in mind. Transcript

In this audio extract from AbilityNet's monthly Accessibility Insights webinar series, we welcome Sarah Herrlinger, Senior Director of Global Accessibility, Policy & Initiatives at Apple as the latest guest.Robin Christopherson MBE Head of Digital Inclusion at AbilityNet hosts a monthly online chat with individuals who are each working to improve digital accessibility and digital inclusion.On this webinar, introduced by AbilityNet's Annie Mannion, Sarah discussed Apple's accessibility developments over the past year, its experiences with Covid 19, and how the organisation prioritises inclusion.You can download a transcript of this session from the AbilityNet website and view the video recording of the webinar on the AbilityNet website, where you can also find additional Q&As and shownotes.Get in touch via enquiries@abilitynet.org.uk with feedback, questions and comments.

Saddled in between Christmas and the New Year, the crew arrives with a healthy dose of information regarding Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and maybe a bit about Google. We hope all of you are safe and warm. And while Angie is basking in the Florida sunshine, the rest of the crew are weathering the blistery wrath of Winter.  But the show must go on! Why are headsets, headphones and ear buds becoming so important? What about that Bluetooth relationship with Windows? And  how do you feel about Facebook taking out full-page ads to call out Apple when possibly, Facebook should be looking in the mirror. The debate rages on. Apple seems to be working on that Electric Car, again, and will it hit the road driverless in 2024 or 2028? You may think that is a ways out but try waiting for the Air Pod Pros delivery timeframe!  Hmm. Do you think Siri is going to Navigate your vehicle or would you let that smart device do anything in the Apple car?  See what the crew thinks of Fitness Plus or is it Fitness Less when consideration for description is not really up to snuff. What do you think about sharing an iPhone or iPad? Multiple users for iOS may be on the horizon, but then again, Air Power and Air Tags are on that same horizon.  Join the Tech Abilities Crew for this end of the year conversation and be sure to leave us some feedback and/or suggestions on our phone line at 612-367-6093, we would love to hear from you. Here are some links to the topics from the episode: A new report says that the Apple Car will arrive in 2024 with a ‘monocell’ battery design If you order Apple's new $550 AirPods Max headphones now, you might not get them until March Apple working on technology to finally allow iOS devices to support multiple users Explore with LiDAR on the New World Channel in the latest SeeingAI Update – Demo Included Coming Soon! Super Lidar – The First Lidar App for iPhone 12 Pro Series. LiDAR – Light Distance and Ranging from the Makers of Supersense AI for the Blind Apple Accessibility – Built‑in Features that Work the Way You Do. Make Them Yours, and Make Something Wonderful.. A Conversation with Sarah Herrlinger, Apple’s Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Full Transcript   Sarah Herrlinger joins Raqi Gomez and Jeff Thompson in the Blind Abilities Studio to talk about accessibility and the major refresh of the Apple.com/accessibility web site. With the roll out of all the new Apple products, the Accessibility Team has been working hard to ensure that all the hardware is accessible and even enhancing the access along the way. Lidar, Light Detection and Ranging, is new to the iPhone 12 Pro line and People Detection is a good example of how moving through space with accessibility is more and more a reality. Magnifier now recognizes elements and objects in the view finder, so Voiceover users have to check out the magnifier app and take a look around. With all the new sizes of the iPhone 12 line-up including the iPhone SE, there are sizes and features for everyone. Sarah takes us through the development of People Detection, the enhancement of the Magnifier App an the importance of being able to individualize your accessibility features to your own needs. You will find some Magnifier demonstrations after the interview. How to Move the Magnifier App to your Home Screen, How to Turn on the Magnifier Feature and using Magnifier to detect elements and objects. Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

In Episode 199 of The Maccessibility Roundtable Podcast, our knights discuss: Tech CEOs testify before Congress Holly’s Orbit Reader 20 + Twitter hack and API improvements Apple earnings call news Shelly’s interview with Sarah Herrlinger, and Dean Hudson, on the Parallel Podcast The “100 Days Of SwiftUI” free online course Knights on this episode: Darcy Burnard Holly Anderson Shelly Brisbin Robin Christopherson Links For This Episode Apple Accessibility interview on the Parallel Podcast 100 Days of SwiftUI 100SwiftUIwithVO Twitter hashtag Sponsor for this episode This episode is brought to you by Holly’s perfectly Posh. Perfectly Posh is a line of skin care products with naturally based ingredients that are good for your skin and designed to pamper. To learn more or to order visit my website. If you don’t feel comfortable ordering online, feel free to get in touch with me. My twitter is listed above.

Full Transcript Show Summary: Apple Accessibility has never been better and the team at Apple has delivered again. In the studio today we talk to Sarah Herrlinger, Apple Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, and Dean Hudson, and engineer on the Apple accessibility team. Learn about the new features coming to the latest iPhones and join in the excitement as we roll through the Apple Orchard and pick a few apple features to highlight. There is much more deeper in the orchard and you can find out more about what is new for iOS14 on the web at www.Apple.com.  You will find some resources to help schools, teachers and parents create engaging learning experiences from home. Check out, Teach and Learn from Any Distance. And share with your community. With the advances in accessibility and a hint of the possibilities with the hardware, APIs and Screen Recognition, just to mention a few, And with what Apple is doing to educate teachers and students with the Swift Playground and XCode accessibility, the possibilities are endless. No matter how you want to access an Apple product, there is an Apple for everybody’s future - today and tomorrow.  Thanks Apple!  Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. To find your State Services in your State you can go to www.AFB.org and search the directory for your agency. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Assistive Technology Community for the Blind and Visually Impaired. and the Facebook group That Blind Tech Show.

What's coming for accessibility on Apple's platforms later this year? My guests are Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, and Dean Hudson, an engineer on the Apple accessibility team. We talk VoiceOver/Screen Recognition, accessibility improvements for XCode, Magnifier updates, new Braille features for iOS, Big Sur's impact on low-vision accessibility, Headphone Accommodation and Back Tap.

What's coming for accessibility on Apple's platforms later this year? My guests are Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, and Dean Hudson, an engineer on the Apple accessibility team. We talk VoiceOver/Screen Recognition, accessibility improvements for XCode, Magnifier updates, new Braille features for iOS, Big Sur's impact on low-vision accessibility, Headphone Accommodation and Back Tap.

What's coming for accessibility on Apple's platforms later this year? My guests are Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, and Dean Hudson, an engineer on the Apple accessibility team. We talk VoiceOver/Screen Recognition, accessibility improvements for XCode, Magnifier updates, new Braille features for iOS, Big Sur's impact on low-vision accessibility, Headphone Accommodation and Back Tap.

Le programme de l’actu des nouvelles technologies et de l’accessibilité cette semaine. Du côté des applications EzyMob : une application pour nous guider (en développement). Favoris, dossiers, suppression de bruit… les mémos vocaux sur iOS 14 font le plein de nouveautés. Nearby Share : le AirDrop sauce Google pour Android 11 se précise. Microsoft : un nouvel outil de récupération de fichiers pour Windows 10. Firefox 78 est là. Free lance une mise à jour pour le Player de la Freebox Delta avec le contrôle de l’interface TV via l’assistant vocal Alexa. Le reste de l’actu Interview de Sarah Herrlinger and Dean Hudson, en charge de l’accessibilité chez Apple, par le site AppleVis. Apple recrute un ingénieur qualité logiciel pour l’accessibilité. Podcast Parlons UX Design’s. Foire Aux Questions Cette semaine, une question de Pascale - Cobian Backup 11 (Gravity) - DSYNCHRONIZE - EaseUS Download Center. Pour poser une question, envoyez votre message audio à faq@oxytude.org, moins d’une minute 30 secondes, si possible, dans un environement accoustique feutré. Pour animer cet épisode : Jacques, Philippe et Sof.

Please find a full text transcript of this podcast below. In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Thomas Domville speak with Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple, and her colleague Dean Hudson, who is also a VoiceOver and braille user himself. On 22 June, Apple’s WWDC keynote highlighted the key changes and updates coming in iOS 14, iPad OS 14, Watch OS 7 and Mac OS Big Sur, from a largely mainstream perspective. This conversation with Sarah and Dean gives us the opportunity to learn much more about what’s new in the area of accessibility. Full Transcript of Podcast Please note, This transcript was created solely for communication access. It is not a certified legal transcript and is not entirely verbatim. [Music] Announcer: An AppleVis original. [Transition sound] Sarah Herrlinger: Part of our job is to work on making sure that everything that everyone makes at Apple is accessible. It's also about making sure that there's some really fun things to surprise and delight as many of the communities that we support as we can each year and finding new ways and new communities as we move along. I think this year hopefully, is going to be another fantastic year. [Transition sound] Dean Hudson: On the technical side of things and when you're buried in the year, just sorting out details and what features will do what and you kind of get sort of lost in the trees and coming out for Dub Dub DC sort of look back and say, "Wow, these are some great features. You sort of put things in a broader perspective. [Transition sound] Sarah Herrlinger: Our end goal is always to make sure that whether it is a young student being asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up," and saying, "I want to be an engineer." Or someone who is already an adult looking at going into developing. We want to make sure that there's a next generation of developers out there, that are members of the blind community. [Music] Dave Nason: Hello and welcome to AppleVis Extra, this is episode number 75 and we are still in WWDC week. This is our third annual interview with Sarah Herrlinger and again she is joined by Dean Hudson and my name is Dave Nason. I'm joined in the hot seat by my co-host Thomas Domville. Thomas, how are you today? Thomas Domville: I'm doing great. What a week, boy. This has been a busy week, but we got lots of cool stuff to cover, for sure. Dave Nason: Really has yeah. We did a pretty long podcast on Monday night after the keynote. But it was largely focused on kind of what we'd seen in the keynote, the mainstream stuff and so hopefully today we'll get a bit more information about what's changed for us in the accessibility space. Thomas Domville: Absolutely. [Transition sound] Dave Nason: Sarah and Dean, thank you so much for joining us again. It's great to have you back. Sarah Herrlinger: Well, it's so wonderful to be here. We always enjoy being able to spend some time with you both. Dean Hudson: Yeah, it's fantastic. Dave Nason: I know. I hope you're both keeping well in these strange times. Sarah Herrlinger: Definitely. It has been some interesting months we've been going through and I hope everyone out there is safe and well, but we are still making sure that everything keeps moving forward here at Apple. Dave Nason: What a week it's been I'd say, it's always a hectic week I'm sure at WWDC and this year, kind of different. How has it looked this year for you guys in…

Please find a full text transcript of this podcast below. In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Thomas Domville speak with Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple, and her colleague Dean Hudson, who is also a VoiceOver and braille user himself. On 22 June, Apple’s WWDC keynote highlighted the key changes and updates coming in iOS 14, iPad OS 14, Watch OS 7 and Mac OS Big Sur, from a largely mainstream perspective. This conversation with Sarah and Dean gives us the opportunity to learn much more about what’s new in the area of accessibility. Full Transcript of Podcast Please note, This transcript was created solely for communication access. It is not a certified legal transcript and is not entirely verbatim. [Music] Announcer: An AppleVis original. [Transition sound] Sarah Herrlinger: Part of our job is to work on making sure that everything that everyone makes at Apple is accessible. It's also about making sure that there's some really fun things to surprise and delight as many of the communities that we support as we can each year and finding new ways and new communities as we move along. I think this year hopefully, is going to be another fantastic year. [Transition sound] Dean Hudson: On the technical side of things and when you're buried in the year, just sorting out details and what features will do what and you kind of get sort of lost in the trees and coming out for Dub Dub DC sort of look back and say, "Wow, these are some great features. You sort of put things in a broader perspective. [Transition sound] Sarah Herrlinger: Our end goal is always to make sure that whether it is a young student being asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up," and saying, "I want to be an engineer." Or someone who is already an adult looking at going into developing. We want to make sure that there's a next generation of developers out there, that are members of the blind community. [Music] Dave Nason: Hello and welcome to AppleVis Extra, this is episode number 75 and we are still in WWDC week. This is our third annual interview with Sarah Herrlinger and again she is joined by Dean Hudson and my name is Dave Nason. I'm joined in the hot seat by my co-host Thomas Domville. Thomas, how are you today? Thomas Domville: I'm doing great. What a week, boy. This has been a busy week, but we got lots of cool stuff to cover, for sure. Dave Nason: Really has yeah. We did a pretty long podcast on Monday night after the keynote. But it was largely focused on kind of what we'd seen in the keynote, the mainstream stuff and so hopefully today we'll get a bit more information about what's changed for us in the accessibility space. Thomas Domville: Absolutely. [Transition sound] Dave Nason: Sarah and Dean, thank you so much for joining us again. It's great to have you back. Sarah Herrlinger: Well, it's so wonderful to be here. We always enjoy being able to spend some time with you both. Dean Hudson: Yeah, it's fantastic. Dave Nason: I know. I hope you're both keeping well in these strange times. Sarah Herrlinger: Definitely. It has been some interesting months we've been going through and I hope everyone out there is safe and well, but we are still making sure that everything keeps moving forward here at Apple. Dave Nason: What a week it's been I'd…

In Episode 186 of The Maccessibility Roundtable Podcast, our knights discuss: Our Apple Grievances Robin’s Interview with Sarah Herrlinger Apple News Plus Notes and Drafts Will the Mac Pro come out this year? Knights on this episode: Darcy Burnard Holly Anderson Shelly Brisbin Robin Christopherson Links For This Episode Episode of the TechShare Procast where Robin interviews Sarah Herrlinger

Today we have a really good, long interview with all-round accessibility superstar, Sarah Herrlinger of Apple in which we cover a broad range of topics - every one a corker.Download a text transcript of Sarah's interview via the AbilityNet website.

In this first of our post-event procasts, Steven and Robin bring you the best of the best from TechShare Pro 2019. Amongst the audio goodness is Caroline Casey of the Valuable 500, Jenny Lay-Flurrie of Microsoft, Sarah Herrlinger of Apple and lots of carrots and lots and lots of sticks. Please tell your friends and make sure you stay subscribed as a large number of full-length interviews will drop, as usual, in the days to come.The hashtag is #TechSharePro 2019 and you can also contact the show via enquiries@abilitynet.org.uk with feedback, questions and comments.Download a text transcript of this episode via the AbilityNet website.

In this month's edition of AppleVis Unleashed, Thomas Domville, Randy Rusnak, and Mike Malarsie discuss recent Apple news and other topics of interest. Topics featured in this podcast include: VoiceOver on the iPhone turns 10 - and turns blind access up to 11 Parallel - Relay FM WWDC 2019 Roundup: WatchOS 6, tvOS 13, iOS 13, New iPad OS, Mac Pro, macOS and More AppleVis Extra 66: Recapping the WWDC 2019 Keynote AppleVis Extra 67: a Conversation with Sarah Herrlinger and Dean Hudson of Apple's Accessibility Team Battery Safety Concerns Forces Apple to Launch Recall Program for Select 15-inch MacBook Pros Apple expands repairs to nearly 1,000 Best Buy stores in US The Facts About Dark Mode And Battery Life: LCD Vs OLED, iOS 13 On iPhone $10,000 later, an Apple Store Genius diagnoses a $0 MacBook Pro problem Free OCR App Voice - MASSIVE Update after 2 years Backgammon with Buddies Voice based adventure game looking for alpha testers Tip: How To Change the Name of Your iPhone or iPad Tip: How to change your Safari Homepage on Mac, iPhone and iPad You can contact the Unleashed Team with feedback or questions at unleashed@applevis.com

In this month's edition of AppleVis Unleashed, Thomas Domville, Randy Rusnak, and Mike Malarsie discuss recent Apple news and other topics of interest. Topics featured in this podcast include: VoiceOver on the iPhone turns 10 - and turns blind access up to 11 Parallel - Relay FM WWDC 2019 Roundup: WatchOS 6, tvOS 13, iOS 13, New iPad OS, Mac Pro, macOS and More AppleVis Extra 66: Recapping the WWDC 2019 Keynote AppleVis Extra 67: a Conversation with Sarah Herrlinger and Dean Hudson of Apple's Accessibility Team Battery Safety Concerns Forces Apple to Launch Recall Program for Select 15-inch MacBook Pros Apple expands repairs to nearly 1,000 Best Buy stores in US The Facts About Dark Mode And Battery Life: LCD Vs OLED, iOS 13 On iPhone $10,000 later, an Apple Store Genius diagnoses a $0 MacBook Pro problem Free OCR App Voice - MASSIVE Update after 2 years Backgammon with Buddies Voice based adventure game looking for alpha testers Tip: How To Change the Name of Your iPhone or iPad Tip: How to change your Safari Homepage on Mac, iPhone and iPad You can contact the Unleashed Team with feedback or questions at unleashed@applevis.com

In this month's edition of AppleVis Unleashed, Thomas Domville, Randy Rusnak, and Mike Malarsie discuss recent Apple news and other topics of interest. Topics featured in this podcast include: VoiceOver on the iPhone turns 10 - and turns blind access up to 11 Parallel - Relay FM WWDC 2019 Roundup: WatchOS 6, tvOS 13, iOS 13, New iPad OS, Mac Pro, macOS and More AppleVis Extra 66: Recapping the WWDC 2019 Keynote AppleVis Extra 67: a Conversation with Sarah Herrlinger and Dean Hudson of Apple's Accessibility Team Battery Safety Concerns Forces Apple to Launch Recall Program for Select 15-inch MacBook Pros Apple expands repairs to nearly 1,000 Best Buy stores in US The Facts About Dark Mode And Battery Life: LCD Vs OLED, iOS 13 On iPhone $10,000 later, an Apple Store Genius diagnoses a $0 MacBook Pro problem Free OCR App Voice - MASSIVE Update after 2 years Backgammon with Buddies Voice based adventure game looking for alpha testers Tip: How To Change the Name of Your iPhone or iPad Tip: How to change your Safari Homepage on Mac, iPhone and iPad You can contact the Unleashed Team with feedback or questions at unleashed@applevis.com

Welcome to the 12 episode of the EBU Access Cast. We decided to refresh the way how our podcast is presented, so from now on every month you will hear somebody different from our team who will be the main host for the episode. In the June episode Tanja took the position of the captain and she is joined by Mario, Bart and Pawel who became our newest team member. This time we are bringing you the accessibility news from the Apple conference WWDC 2019. In its opening Apple announced that technology is the most powerfull when everyone can use it and they showed clearly their commitment by presenting plenty of new accessibility functionalities on Apple devices that we can expect from this autumn. Starting from iOS13 and iPadOs the accessibility menu will be moved from the general settings to the top level settings which clearly shows the importance that Apple gives to accessibility. The feature that received most attention is the full voice control that will be available starting from MacOSCatalina and iOS13. The feature is ment for persons with motor disabilities, but this is another functionality that everyone can benefit from. Read more on the Apple VIS blog and listen to the Apple VIS podcast with Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple and Dean Hudson, Accessibility Evangelist at Apple. Another functionality that we are looking forward is the automatic recognition of unlabeled buttons in inaccessible apps. Custom gestures, a feature that we know from other screen readers, will be available in VoiceOver and will allow easier access to predefined functions. Liblouis will be supported on all Apple devices and the response time for braille screen typing will be increased for those who type in braille very fast. Low vision users will benefit from hover text functionality that will allow to enlarge the selected area on the screen. The major news for Apple WatchOS 6 is that applications can run independently from the iPhone and it will have its own Appstore. Applications for listening audiobooks, voice memo, calculator and other interesting applications in the health section will be available from the WatchOS6. Check out the keynote on Youtube Microsoft released the 1903 spring update with several accessibility improvements in Narrator, for the full list check out the Windows 10 help forum Talking about accessibility and screen readers on Windows, the Vispero Group just launched the June JAWS update and the list of improvements is available on the Freedom Scientific webpage Automatic image recognition is becoming much better and accurate as we move forward, therefore mobile application TapTapSee that most of us used some years ago brings a new, completely AI-based image recognition. The quality of descriptions will be much more accurate and the recognition will be faster. We tested the Clew application that serves for path retracing in the indoor navigation, it is available only for iOS devices and it uses Apple ARKit and camera to understand the surrounding. While the accuracy of the application is very high in the current version, we found out that the next update will provide the functionality to save the recorded path and we hope that the list of features will be extended to help visually impaired persons to orientate more easily in an unknown indoor environment. At the end of our episode listen to the interview that we made with Feelif and discover a new way of experiencing shapes and images by haptics and sound. As always feel free to leave us a comment or suggestion on our Twitter account or by e-mail and we are looking forward to be back with you in July.

Apple's Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, Sarah Herrlinger talks about new and updated accessibility features on the company's platforms, as well as a bit of iOS access history.

Apple's Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, Sarah Herrlinger talks about new and updated accessibility features on the company's platforms, as well as a bit of iOS access history.

Apple's Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, Sarah Herrlinger talks about new and updated accessibility features on the company's platforms, as well as a bit of iOS access history.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Thomas Domville are joined by Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple; and Dean Hudson, Accessibility Evangelist at Apple. Topics covered in this podcast include an in-depth look at new accessibility features coming later this year in Apple software for blind and low vision users, as well as a broader look at Apple's approach to making their products accessible to as many people as possible. Full transcript of podcast Please note, This transcript was created solely for communication access. It is not a certified legal transcript and is not entirely verbatim. [music] Announcer: This is the AppleVis Extra. Dave Nason: Hello, and welcome to AppleVis Extra. This is episode number 67 coming hot on the heels of episode number 66 which was our round-table about WWDC keynote on Monday. Today, myself, Dave Nason, and my colleague, Thomas Domville, also known as Anonymouse, are delighted to be joined by two people from Apple live from WWDC conference this week. We have the head of accessibility at Apple, Sarah Herrlinger, and we have one of the accessibility technicians called Dean Hudson. Thomas, thanks for joining me. We're delighted to be getting the chance to interview these guys today. Thomas Domville: Definitely! I am so excited to meet with these two. I know that we are going to learn a great deal of things today, and I hope our listeners will, too. It's going to be a lot of fun. Dave Nason: Yeah, it was a big keynote, wasn't it? We talked about a lot on Monday. People can listen to that podcast for the full details of what we talked about in our immediate kind of aftermath, but there was a lot there. Thomas Domville: Definitely! A lot to soak up, and even today I'm still soaking things up, and hearing things that we didn't really pick up on on the WWDC day itself. As we're starting to get our hands on these betas, more and more things are starting to pop up. This makes this even more exciting of a podcast to listen to. Dave Nason: I think we all know that iOS 12 was a performance update. I think whether you had accessibility needs or not, it wasn't a feature-rich release last year. This year, I think there's a bit more there in the accessibility world as well, and in general when it comes to features. I think we're going to have plenty of questions. Thomas Domville: Definitely! I think that what I came away with from Monday was a lot of people were saying "Is that all?" "Is that it?" I was like oh, my gosh, are you kidding me? There was a lot there. I think for every 1 thing they mentioned, there were probably 20 things they didn't mention. There is so much under-the-hood. Like you said, this is a vast difference, a stark difference, between last year's iOS 12 to this year iOS 13. That is the same for those with accessibility. There are quite a few small changes, and new things that we can expect which I'm very excited to talk about. Dave Nason: Indeed! Let's welcome our two guests! We have, all the way from California in the middle of WWDC week ………………they've taken the time out to talk to us. We have Sarah Herrlinger, and Dean Hudson. Do you guys want to tell us a little about yourselves? Dean, do you want to go first, and tell us who you are, and what you do? Dean Hudson: Yeah, sure. Thanks for…

Steven interviews Apple's Senior Director of Global Accessibility Policy & Initiatives, Sarah Herrlinger, at Apple’s Word Wide Developers Conference in San Jose. They discuss Apple’s approach to accessibility and many of the new accessibility features announced this year.

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Thomas Domville are joined by Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple; and Dean Hudson, Accessibility Evangelist at Apple. Topics covered in this podcast include an in-depth look at new accessibility features coming later this year in Apple software for blind and low vision users, as well as a broader look at Apple's approach to making their products accessible to as many people as possible. Full transcript of podcast Please note, This transcript was created solely for communication access. It is not a certified legal transcript and is not entirely verbatim. [music] Announcer: This is the AppleVis Extra. Dave Nason: Hello, and welcome to AppleVis Extra. This is episode number 67 coming hot on the heels of episode number 66 which was our round-table about WWDC keynote on Monday. Today, myself, Dave Nason, and my colleague, Thomas Domville, also known as Anonymouse, are delighted to be joined by two people from Apple live from WWDC conference this week. We have the head of accessibility at Apple, Sarah Herrlinger, and we have one of the accessibility technicians called Dean Hudson. Thomas, thanks for joining me. We're delighted to be getting the chance to interview these guys today. Thomas Domville: Definitely! I am so excited to meet with these two. I know that we are going to learn a great deal of things today, and I hope our listeners will, too. It's going to be a lot of fun. Dave Nason: Yeah, it was a big keynote, wasn't it? We talked about a lot on Monday. People can listen to that podcast for the full details of what we talked about in our immediate kind of aftermath, but there was a lot there. Thomas Domville: Definitely! A lot to soak up, and even today I'm still soaking things up, and hearing things that we didn't really pick up on on the WWDC day itself. As we're starting to get our hands on these betas, more and more things are starting to pop up. This makes this even more exciting of a podcast to listen to. Dave Nason: I think we all know that iOS 12 was a performance update. I think whether you had accessibility needs or not, it wasn't a feature-rich release last year. This year, I think there's a bit more there in the accessibility world as well, and in general when it comes to features. I think we're going to have plenty of questions. Thomas Domville: Definitely! I think that what I came away with from Monday was a lot of people were saying "Is that all?" "Is that it?" I was like oh, my gosh, are you kidding me? There was a lot there. I think for every 1 thing they mentioned, there were probably 20 things they didn't mention. There is so much under-the-hood. Like you said, this is a vast difference, a stark difference, between last year's iOS 12 to this year iOS 13. That is the same for those with accessibility. There are quite a few small changes, and new things that we can expect which I'm very excited to talk about. Dave Nason: Indeed! Let's welcome our two guests! We have, all the way from California in the middle of WWDC week ………………they've taken the time out to talk to us. We have Sarah Herrlinger, and Dean Hudson. Do you guys want to tell us a little about yourselves? Dean, do you want to go first, and tell us who you are, and what you do? Dean Hudson: Yeah, sure. Thanks for…

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Thomas Domville are joined by Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple; and Dean Hudson, Accessibility Evangelist at Apple. Topics covered in this podcast include an in-depth look at new accessibility features coming later this year in Apple software for blind and low vision users, as well as a broader look at Apple's approach to making their products accessible to as many people as possible. Full transcript of podcast Please note, This transcript was created solely for communication access. It is not a certified legal transcript and is not entirely verbatim. [music] Announcer: This is the AppleVis Extra. Dave Nason: Hello, and welcome to AppleVis Extra. This is episode number 67 coming hot on the heels of episode number 66 which was our round-table about WWDC keynote on Monday. Today, myself, Dave Nason, and my colleague, Thomas Domville, also known as Anonymouse, are delighted to be joined by two people from Apple live from WWDC conference this week. We have the head of accessibility at Apple, Sarah Herrlinger, and we have one of the accessibility technicians called Dean Hudson. Thomas, thanks for joining me. We're delighted to be getting the chance to interview these guys today. Thomas Domville: Definitely! I am so excited to meet with these two. I know that we are going to learn a great deal of things today, and I hope our listeners will, too. It's going to be a lot of fun. Dave Nason: Yeah, it was a big keynote, wasn't it? We talked about a lot on Monday. People can listen to that podcast for the full details of what we talked about in our immediate kind of aftermath, but there was a lot there. Thomas Domville: Definitely! A lot to soak up, and even today I'm still soaking things up, and hearing things that we didn't really pick up on on the WWDC day itself. As we're starting to get our hands on these betas, more and more things are starting to pop up. This makes this even more exciting of a podcast to listen to. Dave Nason: I think we all know that iOS 12 was a performance update. I think whether you had accessibility needs or not, it wasn't a feature-rich release last year. This year, I think there's a bit more there in the accessibility world as well, and in general when it comes to features. I think we're going to have plenty of questions. Thomas Domville: Definitely! I think that what I came away with from Monday was a lot of people were saying "Is that all?" "Is that it?" I was like oh, my gosh, are you kidding me? There was a lot there. I think for every 1 thing they mentioned, there were probably 20 things they didn't mention. There is so much under-the-hood. Like you said, this is a vast difference, a stark difference, between last year's iOS 12 to this year iOS 13. That is the same for those with accessibility. There are quite a few small changes, and new things that we can expect which I'm very excited to talk about. Dave Nason: Indeed! Let's welcome our two guests! We have, all the way from California in the middle of WWDC week ………………they've taken the time out to talk to us. We have Sarah Herrlinger, and Dean Hudson. Do you guys want to tell us a little about yourselves? Dean, do you want to go first, and tell us who you are, and what you do? Dean Hudson: Yeah, sure. Thanks for having us. This is a real honor. I am Dean Hudson. I started here at Apple probably 2006 where things were starting to roll. I've been here in the accessibility engineering team when there were three of us. It has now expanded greatly, but it's been a real fun ride all the way through advent of iOS making that accessible up through Apple TV, Watch, and HomePod. It's been a really fun ride. I now, the last few years, have worked for Sarah, as the Accessibility Evangelist at Apple. Really really fun times. Sarah Herrlinger: I'm Sarah Herrlinger, and I lead our efforts in the Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives team. I get to work with Dean which is always a lot of fun. Our team really focuses on accessibility as a core corporate value for Apple. We look holistically at all the ways that we can infuse accessibility into the Apple ecosystem. Whether that be through products, or services, or stores, or anything that we do, just making sure that every employee at Apple understands what accessibility means to us as a company, and that all of our users know about all of the amazing things that we are working to do, so that they take advantage of those, and get more out of their devices. Dave Nason: Cool! I guess your job is making sure that accessibility is there on the ground floor of every project. Is that kind of an idea? Sarah Herrlinger: Yep. Absolutely! Through both Dean and I, we look at all those different areas. We get, early and often, into all of the different projects here to make sure that everybody thinks about accessibility in what they do. Thomas Domville: What an exciting job to have! That is like a dream! It's amazing to hear you guys have been there for so long especially Dean since 2006 when he was part of a team of three. That just totally blows my mind where we are today in terms of what we have gone so far with both of you. That's-- Dave Nason: When you think-- Thomas Domville: --amazing. Dave Nason: --to join one year before the iPhone launched. Everything that's happened since. Dean Hudson: Yeah. Well, I should say I am a VoiceOver user, totally blind. It was just very fun. The thing that you have to keep in mind, and it really takes a lot of character, but you have to be patient. People want things to happen tomorrow, and it just doesn't work that way. In the end, we took some time to develop and get things right, and it has paid off. We kind of lead the industry now in accessibility, and it's because we start at a ground level as Sarah was saying. Before even any lines of code are written, we get in there with the teams, and get people to think about accessibility early. Dave Nason: That's cool! That's such an advantage for you in a sense in what you do because you're both an expert in being a blind customer, and you're an expert in Apple, and what's going on on the inside of the company, I guess. Sarah Herrlinger: That's exactly why I stole him away from the engineering team, and brought him over to become our tech evangelist because he is so good at being able to go to every team in the company, and really express to them the importance of the work that we do, and get them to really think about not just the blind community, but every community that we support. [laughter] Thomas Domville: Educate. That's the key word is to educate everyone, and explain how to dive in, and do it the right way. Dave Nason: I've seen in my own work the difference the passion can make. You know what I mean? It's not just dryly telling them this is the features, but when they can actually see a human being using those features, and the difference. I'd say I think that goes a long way when you're speaking to an executive or a project manager or whatever. Dean Hudson- Yeah. Yeah. No, there were a few times when I would just bring my device to an engineer on the audio team, for example, and say this is wrong, this doesn't work. Can you guys do something about this? They're like oh, my gosh, you've been using this? We should fix this. [laughter] Thomas Domville: That's awesome! Sarah Herrlinger: A lot of years of great work being done. Dave Nason: Fantastic! Of course, we're in the middle of a very busy time of year for you guys. We had the keynote on Monday. I would say one of the highlights of the show was the announcement of Voice Control, and that demo that we saw. Do you want to kind of tell us a little about? We saw highlights. There's probably plenty to talk about around Voice Control. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah, we're really excited about Voice Control. One of the things that has been important to us as an accessibility team is to continually look at new user groups that might not otherwise be able to use our technology. How do we keep pushing forward, and making sure that everyone who wants to use an Apple product has the opportunity to do so, and has the tools available to make that simple and easy and fun? Voice Control is a feature that was built with individuals with extreme physical-motor limitations in mind. It is individuals who wouldn't be able to use their devices unless they were able to use their voice. What Voice Control does is give them full access to their devices. It is built into both Mac OS and iOS platforms, so for any iOS device or Mac, being able to really control and use your device with just your voice. That would be all elements of navigation, opening apps, opening menus, moving around on the different devices, as well as things like dictation, text editing, and doing those things in a seamless fashion, so moving from one to the next, saying open Pages, dictating text, then saying open Photos, and doing something in your Photos app. Things like that all sort of moving through seamlessly, and not having to kind of move from one to the other in a more stunted way. We wanted it to be something that was really useful and efficient for those users who rely upon their voice. Dave Nason: I sort of speculated on Monday that maybe it was built on the same framework--if that's the right terminology--as VoiceOver and Switch Control, so that if you designed for one you design for the other. Is that the case, or is it a whole different... Sarah Herrlinger: It does take advantage of the accessibility API that's built into our software developer kit. One of the messages that we really try to express out to developers this week is how important it is to use that accessibility API, and how when you do it, you get so much from it. With all three of those utilizing that, if you are someone who... It's sort of the well, if you're concerned about one group, hey, you're going to get the other ones for free. We definitely want everyone to use this, and to really be good digital citizens when it comes to accessibility because this is the foundation for so much of what we do. Thomas Domville: That's so intriguing because it makes me think in my mind. I'm trying to grasp how that framework work, as in so the elements you see on the given page, is that the same as the VoiceOver? Are you able to go into more specifics like go right four? Sarah Herrlinger: Well, so, to give an example. When you think about how important it is in VoiceOver to label elements on the screen, to label images and buttons and things like that, one of the things that then both Switch Control and Voice Control does is it hooks onto those individual elements as well. For example, with Voice Control, one of the features to it is being able to say Show Numbers. Then any of those elements, anything that would be tappable or clickable--depending on whether it's an iOS or Mac device--becomes something that shows up on the screen, so that you could, for example, in the Photos app, say Show Numbers, and then say tap 14, and it is that specific photo that you're trying to get to which really improves the efficiency for someone using voice. Underneath it's also using that same framework to it. Dean Hudson: I think even Eric gave an example in the keynote the other day--or not the keynote, sorry, the state of the union--where he tried to click on an element, and it didn't work. He said "see, it didn't work because it doesn't have an accessibility label." It definitely hinges upon the accessibility underneath the API. Dave Nason: That's cool. I was actually thi-- [crosstalk] Dave Nason: Sorry! Sarah Herrlinger: It's all the same foundational API, but we also allow even more specific APIs, so developers who want to create even better experiences for Voice Control and such, or for a Voice Control-only experience, they can do that, too. The API is the common base, but it allows very detailed customization to make really great experiences for each one of these types of assistive technology as well. Thomas Domville: Wow! That is amazing! It really does going to kind of bring, in a roundabout way, you're also bringing up VoiceOver accessibility issues up. Like you just mentioned, elements or buttons that are not labeled correctly, and that has definitely to bring up to forefront with the developers if they want to take advantage of this-- Dave Nason: Exactly. Thomas Domville: --control. What if you had, I know a lot of these elements sometimes just like to have just pictures. How do they know what to say for that particular picture? Sarah Herrlinger: Well, actually, we have a new feature that we've added in this year that I think will be very helpful in that area. I'm gonna let Dean grab this one 'cause he's-- [laughter] Dean Hudson: We're trying to wait 'til we get to the features, but you guys have pulled it out of us. [laughter] Dean Hudson: One of the features--and I'm going to get loud because talking about features I get excited--that we're introducing for iOS is to auto label buttons. If a developer puts this hamburger menu or just puts a picture on the button, we will, through machine learning-- you probably heard a little bit about that during the keynote--determine what that button might be labeled. Having tested it, it works pretty good. I've used some crazy applications, and it does a pretty good job. That's sort of how if someone does give a picture, we sort of auto label it, and that's how it would get picked up. Thomas Domville: That's interesting because you have somewhat of a feature like that now when sometimes it will predict what it thinks it is. That works-- Dean Hudson: In text. Thomas Domville: This is more enhanced. Dean Hudson: This is more, yeah, in images. Thomas Domville: Oh, wow! Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. Dave Nason: Now, it's reading text, isn't it, that's visually on a button? Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. I think one of the things that we always try and do is build on from what we've done, but never stop working on any of these features. We have had this available for text. Now, we are using machine learning as it continues to grow and grow, and use that to be able to, as Dean said, try and figure out what that is an image of, and give you that information. It might say button, possibly Home, or whatever it might be, so that as best we can, we are trying to add that additional information for you, so that you have more context. As always, we try and work with every developer, and tell them the more important thing is that you do actually go through and label all of these, and that's why we have tools like the Accessibility Inspector in Xcode with its auditing capabilities that give you information along the way as an app designer to know what you can do to be a better accessibility citizen. on top of that, we know that when people don't, we want to try and make sure that we are improving that situation, and really using tools like machine learning to make that better for the community. Dave Nason: Cool! I kind of have this idea that maybe even people who don't have any motor issues, but maybe they just have their phone on a charging stand at their desk, and rather than picking the phone up, they just look over at their phone and use voice control. Have you found yourself doing that, Sarah, at all? Sarah Herrlinger: Just start using voice control as its own even as someone who is not in the community? Yeah, I think voice control has it does have applicability that can go beyond the specific audience for which we kind of looked as at the sweet spot. I think one of the things that we will find as time goes by is the number of people who use this in many other circumstances. I've certainly had members of the media and such thus far say things like "This will be great for me as I'm driving in my car", or all different kinds of possible use cases. We look forward to seeing how people use them. It's been interesting even for us to see how people who are not members of the blind community turn on VoiceOver for things here and there. We know that a lot of these types of assistive technologies can be used for other use cases, but first and foremost, we want to make sure we're making the best tools for the communities that rely on them. Dave Nason: Yeah. Absolutely! I was just thinking, I suppose, in the context that it can really help to drive use of the accessibility API if a larger group of people in the media are talking about it. Dean Hudson: Uh-huh. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. Dave Nason: Dean, you alluded to other accessibility features, or other new features. Is there anything else that you want to-- Dean Hudson: Yeah. I'd first like to say WWDC was remarkable this year. We unleashed a ton of features that we're really excited about. Another piece of that is being at WWDC, we just saw developers one after another very excited about making their apps accessible. I just wanted to put that out there. We did a couple of events--just sort of mingle events--where we had tables set up, so people could see some accessibility features. It was just packed, and you could just feel the excitement when engineers came up and asked making my app accessible. What do I do? You have these long conversations. Well, you could do this, and try this. It was just very very cool. I'll start with VoiceOver because that's what I use on the Mac. One of the things that we were very excited to bring to the Mac this year is LibLouis. That gives us more than 80 languages for braille, and that's really really cool. As you guys know, LibLouis's open source, and so it's continually growing, so we're continuing to get more languages. Also, we've had a lot of requests for VoiceOver and braille to bring sort of a single-word mode. For iOS users, you'll know this. When you use your braille display, you've probably got maybe an 18 or 12-cell braille display, iOS only shows 1 item at a time to sort of help you maximize that little space that you have. Well, on the desktop, we brought that option there as well, so that if you have an 80-cell braille display, you turn on this option, you will see one item at a time. You can go back-and-forth between either of those modes. That was really cool. We've also improved braille input typing. We know that there are some people in the blindness world that use braille, but they are very very fast typists. We know those folks are out there. We've made it now, so that you can type as fast as you need to to get what you need done, and it'll just work great. Thomas Domville: Bravo! Bravo! Dean Hudson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We definitely listened to all of you guys, and all of you. We've improved braille support on pages that support ARIA. There were some issues even in Mail that we addressed, so now when you paste text, we don't jump to the top of the email. We keep it right there. There were some issues with Messages. We fixed that, and in FaceTime. Some really really great braille improvements. We think you guys are really going to love it! Dave Nason: That's cool! I know some braille users are going to be very happy to hear that! [laughter] Dean Hudson: Yeah, oh yeah. Thomas Domville: Definitely! Dean Hudson: Yeah. Dave Nason: Has much of that made it to iOS as well, or was that Mac-specific? [cross-talk] Dean Hudson: That's all both iOS and Mac. Dave Nason: Wow, that's cool. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah, including LibLouis which is also on Apple TV, too, so all of our braille-supported platforms we've brought those LibLouis tables to expand what you are able to access. Even when you think about things like the fact that on apple TV you can get captions through your braille display, if those captions are provided in one of the LibLouis languages, great way to be able to get that information, too. Dean Hudson: Some other things that we've done for VoiceOver on the desktop is custom punctuation. This is very big if you are a coder. When you're reading email, that's fine, you can have different levels of punctuation. When you're reading code, it’s very important to customize your punctuation, so that you see the symbols that you need to see. That will be sort of like activities. It will be sort of built-in. You switch between Mail, you switch between Xcode, you'll get your right punctuation level. Dave Nason: You can kind of say okay, I'm in Xcode, I need to hear the colons and the semicolons-- [cross-talk] Dean Hudson: Yeah. Dave Nason: --the brackets. Dean Hudson: Right. In Mail, I don't necessarily need to hear that. Sarah Herrlinger: Rather than just having that some, most, all, it gives you a lot more granularity in how you can do that customization. This is another one that is also on iOS. One of the other cool things about it is that through CloudKit, you can sync those preferences from one platform to the other. That which you set up as a custom punctuation on Mac OS will automatically be available to you on iOS. Thomas Domville: That's beautiful! Any improvement in Xcode especially code-reading capabilities, that's a big improvement. Dave Nason: The cloud bit. I have to say that as someone who uses both Mac and iOS, the ability to even with things like keyboard shortcuts, you don't have to set them up again. The same with punctuation, just having it sync is-- Thomas Domville: Mmmhmm, mmmhmm. Sarah Herrlinger: Absolutely! Thomas, I heard you mention Xcode. Dean, I know you have been really excited about Xcode as a coder yourself. Dean Hudson: Yeah, Xcode is really huge. It's a big big application. What we wanted to do is focus on where you spend most of your time, and that's in the editor. We've improved, for example, code completion. As you're typing in the name of a function or method, hit Tab, and it autocompletes. You can now access that. Another point that we improved on is if you set--I'm going to get this wrong, I want to say landmarks, it's not landmarks--where you need to debug code, you set these markers. Those markers are now accessible. We've also added some rotors now that will allow you to navigate between methods and between scope. If you've had nested if loops, you can now navigate between those. Makes it really easy for you to jump around in your code. Many many fixes around editing. We think that's going to make that experience a lot better. Thomas Domville: That's beautiful. Dave Nason: That's cool. We do get a lot of questions on applevis.com about Xcode. It pops up every now and then, as people looking for help with it. Dean Hudson: We're continuing to work on that. One of the projects that you guys have probably heard of is Everybody Can Code. We've done that with Swift with the iPad, but we know there's more there. Eventually, you going to get to some levels that you need to use Xcode. We really want to focus on that to make that a fantastic experience. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. To stick with VoiceOver, but to jump platforms and go to iOS real quick. Couple of things to bring to your attention, one of which is just that when you go into Settings, you're going to find Accessibility in a different place. That is that it's been upleveled in Settings, so rather than having to drill in from tap on Settings, then go to General, then go to Accessibility, it's now at that top level of Settings just below General in the flow, in the chronology there. That was really important to us because we wanted to make sure that it becomes that much more discoverable for people, and that they use these features more. One of the other things we've done with it is we've also built accessibility into the sort of setup flow, what we call Buddy, as you get a new device. While for a VoiceOver user, you may already know that doing the triple-tap on the Side Button will turn VoiceOver on, for some of those other accessibility features that people may well have felt oh, I can't get to this until after I get through setup, we wanted to make sure that those were ready right up front, so that if you need to invert colors or increase your font or things like that, you can find those earlier in the process. Dean Hudson: Another one is customizable gestures for iOS. Dave Nason: You got my next question. [unintelligible] [laughter] Dean Hudson: Think about things like Control Center, Home Screen, App Chooser--App Switcher, pardon me. You can now assign those to, say, two-finger quadruple tap. Thomas Domville: Oh, that's nice. That's going to be a game changer! Dean Hudson: Yeah, yeah, we think so. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah, you can even assign Siri shortcuts to VoiceOver commands. Dave Nason: Oh, fantastic! [unintelligible] Thomas Domville: Yeah, that's going to be amazing right there, customizable VoiceOver gestures. I love that! Dean Hudson: Yeah. In fact, both platforms are now we have full keyboard access. If you have your iPad now, and you have it connected to a Bluetooth, even gestures--say the Rotate gesture or the two-finger double tap and hold--you can now assign those to a keyboard command. You can perform those actions on your keyboard. [crosstalk] Thomas Domville: Oh, wow! Dave Nason: I read a bit about there being new keyboard shortcuts across the platforms. Could you tell us a little bit more about what's been kind of added there? Sarah Herrlinger: iPad OS has more commands in apps. I think that's connected to the full keyboard access that's now available. Thomas Domville: Okay. I really love the new Siri voices, by the way! [unintelligible] Thomas Domville: That was beautiful. I liked hearing that! I'm guessing we will be able to use that as a VoiceOver voice? Sarah Herrlinger: Mmmhmm. Dean Hudson: Yes. Thomas Domville: Awesome! Have we gained any new voices like Eloquence or anything like that? Sarah Herrlinger: No Eloquence voices, but that... The new Siri voices are also available on the Watch, so that's another one-- [Unintelligible] Dave Nason: We heard the U.S. one. Are there international new Siri voices, or at the moment is this U.S.? Sarah Herrlinger: My understanding at this stage is it is starting with U.S., and I think we'll have to see where they go from there. Dean Hudson: Yeah. Thomas Domville: Well, making accessibility down to the root of Settings, that is a big thing, as in terms of that Apple recognized that this should be up front to everyone that's sighted or not, they're going to come across this, and be curious, and jump into that. I'm really excited that you guys finally put that up in front and to the main section with the main components. Dave Nason: That's been a step-by-step process, hasn't it? I remember when it moved from the bottom of the General up towards the top of General, and now it's into the-- [crosstalk] [laughter] Sarah Herrlinger: Our evangelism has worked! [laughter] [Unintelligible] Thomas Domville: Good job, Dean, good job! [laughter] Dean Hudson: We haven't talked about some of the low-vision features. Dave Nason: Yeah, I was going to ask that. Dean Hudson: On the Mac... Do you want to talk about the Hover? Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah, on Mac OS, we have a couple of great new features we've added. The one that I'm most excited about as someone who is a glasses wearer and who does struggle with small text is a feature called Hover Text. It's a new way to make it easy to view text on your Mac display. What you do is if you hover over any text with your cursor, and press down on the Command key, you get a dedicated window with a large high-resolution text field which gives you whatever is the text that's underneath that cursor. You can blow it up to 128-point, you can choose the font type that works best for you or that you prefer. You can also change the color of both the text and the background, and the cursor that surrounds the text showing up on the screen. Lots of customization available, so that whatever your vision needs are as a low-vision user, you can be able to sort of customize that to work best for you. One of the other things that I love is... For a long time, we've had a feature, and that is Say Text Under the Pointer. When you turn that on, you not only get this giant text customized in the way you want it to look, but it will also speak that out as it's going over the element as well. Text that would be in a menu or in a dock that might be smaller than what you would want it to be, you now have the opportunity to be able to take any text, and just blow it up on the screen. Dave Nason: That's actually huge because there's some people who are not quite at full screenreader level. They don't need that, but they need that little bit of help sometimes with a bit of speech, and I think that's huge. Also, I have an application at work which doesn't support screen readers very well in terms of keyboard commands, so I can use it with the mouse by rubbing the mouse over certain sections, and it'll read what's under there. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. We have another feature called Zoom Display which is for multi-display users. If you're someone who uses two screens, Zoom Display will let you keep one screen zoomed in close while the other one remains at standard resolution. It could be great for everyday work when you are just on your own working on two monitors in an office, but also one of the other applications for it that we've seen thus far is in terms of doing a presentation. Maybe you want your audience to see the screen in that standard resolution, but you want to blow up something on your own device, so that you can zoom in on areas, and get more information as you are presenting out to the world. A really cool way to think about multi-display users, and how low-vision users might use them differently than someone else. Also, we added in Color Filters in the same way that we have them on iOS. These are filters that support things like color blindness, and we have filters that are specifically built for different types of color blindness, but also being able to do just a straight colored tint over the screen. We've received feedback from individuals with Irlens Syndrome and other types of vision challenges where just being able to have the screen tinted to a specific color to do any kind of work on the device has been really helpful. We're excited that that has moved over to the Mac, too. Dean Hudson: I know you guys had a question about--I'm going to get the name wrong--but a feature that allows a developer to develop their iPad app, but then move that over to the desktop. Dave Nason: Project Catalyst. Dean Hudson: Catalyst, yes. Thank you! The question was will accessibility be intact, and happy to say that yes it will. Thomas Domville: Oh, wow! Dean Hudson: If the developer does accessibility work on iOS, that will transfer to Mac OS. Dave Nason: That's going to open a huge opportunity for a whole range of apps. Thomas Domville: We were both talking about that how when we saw that demonstration where you were able to click that little checkbox for Mac. We were wondering if that part of that system to analyze your code would be able to take that accessibility along with it, or improve on it, and point it out to them in certain areas. We had thought about that. Dave Nason: Will that then, I suppose, automatically change from the hint text, for example, which might be double tap to select on the iPad app, and that's VO Spacebar to select on the Mac. Dean Hudson: Yeah, some of those little things we have to work through, but for the most part, they look exactly the same. Some of the sounds we've brought over to the desktop. Sarah Herrlinger: The nice thing for the developers, they can use that iOS accessibility API, and it just ports over to the Mac. The time and effort and energy that someone puts in on one pays forward over into the other. Dave Nason: It's a really interesting project. There was mention onstage Twitter is back suddenly. There was a lot of talk-- [unintelligible] [laughter] Thomas Domville: Yeah, definitely. Can you say, Dean, if the developers have tools of any kind that can analyze their code, and let them know where they lack in the accessibility areas, and where to focus on to make improvements? Dean Hudson: Yes. The Accessibility Inspector is where to go, and we've made, over the last few years, several improvements to it. One is really cool is that you can audit an application. The developer can have their application up on their iPad, target that iPad, and change accessibility right there. If they see a button that's not labeled, they can label it there. They can touch on their iPad, and suddenly it has the label. We highly recommend, at the very least, that the developer runs that audit tool, so at least they know the areas they need to go and fix. Dave Nason: have you ever considered--people will ask this on the site sometimes--have you ever considered requirements along those lines, as opposed to recommendations, or is that something that's possible? I know accessibility is such a broad thing, and every app is different, but we kind of wondered that. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah, that is one of the things that we... We look at this issue a lot. It's not something that goes unnoticed, but it is a very complex issue. I think as we look at how many things fall under the term accessibility, and as well the levels of accessibility of something. Even if you look at just VoiceOver, what is the stamp that says seal of approval? We're constantly trying to look at new ways--including things like doing the machine learning automatic label detection--to try and make it easier, and to build these tools to be more comprehensive, and to be simpler and easier for developers, so that they have fewer reasons to not do it. We want everybody to just do it, and make it so that it's not even necessary to have a listing, but mostly we just want to try and do everything we can to make everything as accessible as possible. One of the other things to note as well in terms of auditing, we also now have a new accessibility audit tool for web content in Safari. That's another area where we've tried to look beyond apps, and into web content as well. Thomas Domville: Oh, that's nice. I appreciate you being up front because you're right, Sarah, the complexity. I can't imagine defining the word what is accessible. For a blind person, that's one thing. For low-vision is one thing, those with dexterity or motor issues is another thing. It's not a clear-cut and dry scope that we could just stamp it, and say you guys got to do this. I can't imagine the complexity to have to be behind something. Obviously, we can't just say this is VoiceOver-accessible because then you're singling out all the others that have other accessibility issues. Dave Nason: Even accessibility is connected to usability, and I might find an app very intuitive and you may not, or... Dean Hudson: Yeah. I mean, I have plenty times where someone says "is this accessible", and say it's accessible for me, I can use it. Someone else may go I don't like that-- [unintelligible] [laughter] Dean Hudson: It's a really really gray area, but it's something that we're striving to make easier as Sarah said, and I think we're going to get there. Thomas Domville: That's awesome. Now, one of the things you guys were talking about in the keynote, and I had wondered, the new gesture to do a three-fingers pinch to copy and three-finger spread to paste. I thought oh, that's so brilliant. I suppose that can be used as a VoiceOver custom gesture? Dean Hudson: We have accommodated that, yes. Thomas Domville: Awesome! Dean Hudson: We have some gestures that you can use to do that, perform those actions. Sarah Herrlinger: yeah, I think as with everything. Our goal even for things that would be considered general mainstream elements of the OS, we always do try and be thoughtful in how a VoiceOver user could navigate that or use it, and also how someone using Switch Control could or how someone using Voice Control. I mean, we look at all of these different elements, and try and be as thoughtful about each as we can. Dave Nason: That does bring us back actually to a related question that I guess I forgot to ask earlier was Voice Control and VoiceOver. Can they play together, or are they distinct in terms of features? Sarah Herrlinger: I would say at this stage, much in the way that VoiceOver was initially built as a feature for the blind community, our goal with Voice Control was to be able to support those with extreme physical-motor limitations. We look at that first and foremost. If you use headphones with Voice Control and you're a VoiceOver user, you may be able to get functionality out of it. When we do these, we often sort of look at let's build out one thing, make sure we've got it, and then we continue to iterate from there, and do more. In the same way, that initially the way that Zoom and VoiceOver work together that's improved over time, the way other things have happened, I think we want to come out of the gate with something that's really a great feature for the community that needs it most, and then figure out from there how we expand. Dave Nason: Absolutely! It's got to be one of the most complex features you've built in a long time, I would imagine. Thomas Domville: No doubt. I'm thinking, too, is that just yesterday somebody revealed how there's a new feature within Accessibility for those on iPad that can use their little mouse. They can actually use that as a cursor pointer. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. We do now have mouse support for iOS. It is a part of Assistive Touch. Just to give that little bit of background on Assistive Touch. Assistive Touch is another one of our features that we created specifically for individuals with physical-motor limitations which allows them to be able to use the device when they may have very limited dexterity, but some. For example, if you can only use one finger, and one finger alone, to work device then when you start thinking about things like how do you do a four-finger swipe, or a pinch, this is something was built in to support those users. A logical extension of that is someone who may need--they aren't using their finger itself on the screen, or on their devices, even on computers--but they use something like a joystick or an assistive mouse that allows them to be able to use the device, and navigate in an alternative fashion. Adding in mouse support on iOS is really, first and foremost, meant to make sure that another community that might not otherwise be able to use a product has that opportunity to do so. We're getting feedback that other people are appreciating it as well, and that's fantastic. We really initially look at how we make sure that we continue to widen the users who are able to use our products in their own individual unique ways. Thomas Domville: oh, no doubt. I do have clients that will use that mouse, and they will hover over something, and it will speak back to them what they're hovering it over, so little things like that that I've seen in the desktop realms is... We always try to wish for things on iOS and iPad iOS and things like that, so any new features like that is very welcome to all line of disabilities. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. I think one of the key things with this is what we wanted to do was figure out how to use a pointing device like you would use your finger. Not so much reimagine how an iPad and a mouse would work, but really focus on how you can get that sort of touch functionality, but using a mouse. Thomas Domville: Now, that we're getting to kind of wrapping things up, I am curious if you guys have any other comments or further features that you would like to reveal to our listeners that may have not been discussed at the keynote, or into the mainstream in terms of iOS, iPad, or the Mac? Dean Hudson: Well, one we haven't talked about that was not in the keynote, but was in another presentation, is the Apple Card. I know that there's been some concerns about how that would work for people who are blind. I've been using it here, testing it, and it's fantastic. One of the things that I've experienced with credit cards is you get this bill, paper bill, and I have no idea what that thing says. I can scan it, and even then it doesn't tell me where I'm spending my money. Now, having that all accessible on iOS is amazing. Just thought I'd put that out there. Sarah Herrlinger: Yeah. I would say just sort of in the bigger picture around things, we didn't even get to all of the things even just for the blind and low-vis communities that we've done over the course of this set of updates. To add in one more, just a quick one. Zoom went through a pretty big re-design on TV OS to just make it easier for individuals or low-vis to be able to control and navigate their devices. I think we could pull out a few more, but in thinking about time, well... Part of it, I would say, is just go in, and start exploring because I think really in all the nooks and crannies, you're going to find different settings, different new things that are there that are helpful. We want people to take advantage of it. We want people to give us feedback. To give the plug for the accessibility@apple.com email address, that is our customer-facing email address. We appreciate that we get a lot of great feedback every day from our users on how things are working for them whether it's asking us questions, reporting bugs, whatever it might be. We would love to get your thoughts on the work that we've been doing, and helps us to figure out what we keep doing into the future. Dave Nason: Great stuff! Well, I think that about does it for us today. Thank you guys again for joining us! We really appreciate it on what is a really busy week, I'm sure. Sarah and Dean, thank you so much, and Thomas, thank you for joining me today! Sarah Herrlinger: Absolutely! Thank you so much for having us! Dean Hudson: Yeah, thank you! Dave Nason: Thomas, interesting conversation. Thomas Domville: Oh, indeed! I'm sure I'm like everybody else. I was just ready for the next thing, ready for the next thing, ready for the next thing, but yet I'm so focused on what they had to say. I really love the time that we had to spend with them in details, but as always it's never enough time. I'm so blessed to have these two people that probably are so busy in their life already! We were just so honored and blessed to have at least a half hour with these folks. In general our listeners is that for every single thing they discussed here today that is new and revealing to you, there's probably 10 more new things under the hood that we going to see when iOS 13 comes out. This is the exciting part about this year, Dave, is this is not like iOS 12 where we had a few things, and that was it! This sounds like we have a lot of little changes coming our way along with some big changes that were not announced like-- [crosstalk] Thomas Domville: Oh, yeah. Dave Nason: I think we hit the highlights, but there's definitely a lot of little hidden gems hopefully. I think-- [crosstalk] Thomas Domville: I thought the low-vision people got a huge boost in the Mac area-- Dave Nason: I think that was overdue as well. I think Zoom and some of those users probably had felt a little neglected versus VoiceOver users in recent years. It looks like Apple have really put an effort in this year to make sure that they really caught up to where they want to be. Thomas Domville: It tells you the significant because they made a point of that. Not only just on the Mac, but as Sarah was saying and she made a point of it, they revamped it in iOS which is long overdue, but especially... The first and foremost of everything that's even new if they came out hard and heavy on the braille stuff, that was huge. Dave Nason: I had Scott Davert speaking in my ear the entire time while they were talking about braille. [laughter] Thomas Domville: All the millions of questions I'm sure that a lot of people have, but just knowing the fact that they're focused on braille this year is, forward and foremost, it was way way overdue, and I'm so ecstatic and excited to hear that. Dave Nason: Crossing all our fingers and all our toes that the performance is there. Thomas Domville: Yeah. Speaking of crossing fingers with toes, what did you think about the VoiceOver gestures customized? Dave Nason: That's really cool! Really really cool! Thomas Domville: I mean I'll have to see how deep- Dave Nason: See which gestures? Yeah. Thomas Domville: Yeah. How deep can we get with it? It sounded like the keyboard is going to be where it's going to really take hold. You can re-do some of the gestures with the keyboard. If it's complicated already for us to do a four-finger double tap on something, oh my gosh, we can now make that easier, but if we can intertwine this with a certain thing that I want to use day-in-day-out, that's a game changer. Dave Nason: Yeah. Absolutely! Even like iPhone 10 and above that don't have the Home button, and maybe some people struggle with those new swipe, the new Home gesture and the new App Switcher gesture, so maybe they could replace that with a two-finger double tap or whatever it might be that they will find easier to perform. Thomas Domville: Mmmhmm. I like the fact that the Voice Control, as a whole, it was meant for a specific people with disability. In a whole, it does cover with the VoiceOver API which means that you're going to knock out two birds with one stone really because-- Dave Nason: That's why I love the media attention Voice Control is hopefully getting because this drives the developer to go I'm going to actually put the effort in to do that, we'll get VoiceOver support for free alongside that. Thomas Domville: Exactly. Boy, I'm going to have to have a label on that, so that they can say something or whatever now. I think it works hands-in-hands. On top of that, Dean was really getting excited about that we now finally have more accessible means to code now with Xcode where Xcode was so alien, and a lot of things just didn't work the way we want to. They put an emphasis in coding, and so those I've always dreamed to be a coder can now have that reality come true. Plus, I love how when they analyze the code for iPad to move over to the Mac, that includes the accessibility with it. Dave Nason: Mmmhmm. Yeah. Yep. I think that was a question a lot of people would have had... I think they renamed it. That was Project Marzipan last year. Thomas Domville: Correct. Dave Nason: It wasn't an overwhelming success, I think. Even Craig said onstage "look, we learned a lot. That was 1.0, and this is 2.0 now." They've given it a new name, and a new lease at life, I think, hopefully. [laughter] Thomas Domville: Well, Catalyst in itself is a whole different separate topic because then we can go on forever because there's a lot of things we want to know. How's this going to work? How's it going to feel? How's it going to smell? Everything about it, Marzipan which is now Catalyst, is going to be very interesting. I can't wait to dive in! I'm excited that they finally put Accessibility under Settings. I heard that rumor before this cast, and I was excited to hear that they put that upfront and foremost with other important buttons under Settings. Dave Nason: Yeah, and it's not down at the bottom. She said it was right underneath General, so that's-- Thomas Domville: Right underneath General where you find Display and Brightness. Dave Nason: Mmmhmm. I think it is positive, and it's good to see that. As you said, we're looking forward to getting stuck into iOS 13. Hopefully, the whole team will be, as usual, beta testing over the summer. [Unintelligible] Thomas Domville: Stay tuned. Dave Nason: Hopefully. Thomas Domville: We will have more information for you. Whether it's in terms of podcasts, or on the website, come to applevis.com to check out in-between during the summer, and definitely check back in the fall when iOS 13 and everybody else gets dropped along with Catalina, the new Apple TV, the new iPad OS, and check out AppleVis for all the latest and greatest and what we've found, and what you can expect in terms of accessibility and other many things. Dave Nason: Thomas, I think that about wraps it up. Thank you again for joining me! Thomas Domville: It was quite an honor. I enjoyed it so much! I hope you did, too, Dave. It was an amazing experience to talk to those two especially Dean now that we now introduced Dean, I think he's coming in as blind and been working there since 2006 was an awesome awesome awesome input on the show. I loved this! Thank you! Dave Nason: Thank you so much! My name is Dave Nason. This is the AppleVis Extra. Thanks for listening! Bye-bye! [music] Announcer: Thank you for listening to this episode of the AppleVis Extra. To learn more about us, visit our website at www.applevis.com. Follow us on Twitter @Applevis. Like us on Facebook.

In this audio special from WWDC, Rene speaks with Sarah Herrlinger, Director, Global Accessibility Policy & initiatives at Apple about new software features that help make computing accessible for everyone. MORE: March: https://standard.tv/vector Gear: https://kit.com/reneritchie Podcast: http://applepodcasts.com/vector Twitter: https://twitter.com/reneritchie Instagram: https://instagram.com/reneritchie Mobile Nations Affiliate Link Policy SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts Overcast Pocket Casts Castro RSS YouTube  

“When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” That’s one of my favorite Tim Cook quotes ever, because it’s fiery and passionate and filled with righteous indignation. It’s not a side of Apple’s CEO we see almost ever. He’s typically the definition of cool and collected. But, when he feels that our core human rights under assault, be it security, privacy, or accessibility, that Tim Cook comes out. And yes, Tim Cook’s Apple believes accessibility is a human right. For people who have low or no vision, low or no hearing, low or no interactivity, primarily and absolutely. But also for people who’ve been injured and temporarily can’t use their dominant hand, are trying to watch Brooklyn 99 and the kids… or parents, just won’t stop talking, children who are trying to learn their first language or anyone trying to learn new languages, people who have just had surgery and you can’t move around a lot, or, like me right now, are suffering with what I can only assume are flood exacerbated allergies or infections that’s led me not to be able to see my phone or laptop properly at times, even drive, or do these videos. Even for people who just want their device to be the way they want it. Bigger, smaller, brighter, darker, calmer, clearer, louder, lower, whatever. Because accessibility is also for everyone. Not just every day but any day you, me, anyone needs it. And because today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I had the opportunity to chat with Sarah Herrlinger, Apple’s Director Global Accessibility Policy & Initiatives, about not just how important accessibility is to the company in theory, and not just how they implement it across their increasingly wide range of products and services, and for a diverse user base that represents a significant percentage of the world’s population, but how and why the evangelize it so that it becomes part of the conversation, of the table stakes, for everyone. SPONSOR: CuriosityStream - Stay curious Go to curiositystream.com/vector and enter the promo code ‘vector’ to start your membership completely free for the first 30 days. LINKS: Global Accessibility Awareness Day ‎Hawkeye Access on the App Store RunGo — Running routes with turn-by-turn voice directions. MORE: Gear: https://kit.com/reneritchie Podcast: http://applepodcasts.com/vector Twitter: https://twitter.com/reneritchie Instagram: https://instagram.com/reneritchie Mobile Nations Affiliate Link Policy SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts Overcast Pocket Casts Castro RSS YouTube  

Welcome back to another That Blind Tech Show, well, at least that is what the script says, now if Bryan can only untie his tongue. Allison and Jeff join Bryan for episode 14 and although Bryan had his foot in his mouth, he did manage to figure out how to converse without even thinking about removing his foot! From the Twitter API announcement, to FlickType storming back form it’s Flexsie beginning, reading hand written messages, working with developers and by the way, What floor are you on? Are you using RSS feeds for your news? Have you tried the Lire App? Did you hear about the new AFB Board member from Apple? Join the crew and have a chuckle on us as we take a stab at the news making headlines and the comments we probably should of edited. Ok, my bad. Become a Beta tester for FlickType at beta@FlickType.com Why is Twitter such a, such a, such a...? Will this kill Twitter #BreakingMyTwitter for you? Apple Granted patent to tell people what floor they are on! AFB welcomes Sarah Herrlinger to its board Apple hires Google Chief of AI Bone Conduction Sunglasses Zungle Thank you for listening! Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow That Blind Tech Show is produced in part with Blind Abilities Network.   You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities Appon the App Store.

Recorded inside Apple's Podcasts studio at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Steven interviews three special guests about their work and what Apple's announcements mean for accessibility. He sat down with Apple's Senior Director of Global Accessibility Policy & Initiatives, Sarah Herrlinger, AssistiveWare CEO David Niemeijer, and WWDC18 student scholarship winner John Ciocca.

ThatBlindTechShow 14: From Twitter to FlickType to the AFB Board and Much Much More News... Like, Bone Conduction Sunglasses, Yup! Welcome back to another That Blind Tech Show, well, at least that is what the script says, now if Bryan can only untie his tongue. Allison and Jeff join Bryan for episode 14 and although Bryan had his foot in his mouth, he did manage to figure out how to converse without even thinking about removing his foot! From the Twitter API announcement, to FlickType storming back form it’s Flexsie  beginning, reading hand written messages, working with developers and by the way, What floor are you on? Are you using RSS feeds for your news? Have you tried the Lire App? Did you you hear about the new AFB Board member from Apple? Join the crew and have a chuckle on us as we take a stab at the news making headlines and the comments we probably should of edited. Ok, my bad.   Become a Beta tester for FlickType at beta@FlickType.com     Why is Twitter such a, such a, such a...? Will this kill Twitter #BreakingMyTwitter for you?   Apple Granted patent to tell people what floor they are on!   AFB welcomes Sarah Herrlinger to its board   Apple hires Google Chief of AI   Bone Conduction Sunglasses Zungle    Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

1636 Commitment to Accessibility in Apple products (Aug. 31, 2016) Show Notes Apple has been a leader in accessibility with all of its products. This week hosts Nancy and Peter Torpey take a look inside Apple and talk with Sarah Herrlinger, Senior Manager for Global Accessibility Policy, about Apple’s commitment to accessibility and about a … Continue reading 1636 Commitment to Accessibility in Apple products (Aug. 31, 2016) →