Introducing 13 Letters: The Accessibility Podcast

02/13/20 • 18 min

Accessibility is, ironically, not the most “accessible” concept. An intricate mix of best practices, regulations and creative approaches, accessibility really just means making things work for everybody. On this new podcast from Be My Eyes, Will Butler and Cordelia McGee-Tubb interview some of the world’s leading experts on accessibility to talk about how the field has evolved, and how esoteric things like WCAG, universal design and usability tests affect the lives of billions of people in big ways.

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Who Invented VoiceOver?

PART ONE: Mike Shebanek made Apple products work for everyone. He wasn’t always an accessibility maven, though. Mike worked his way up to become the product manager for some of Apple’s most famous and influential products – from the original iMac to the first-ever iPad. And when he found himself pushing for the failing consumer electronics company to develop and deploy a free, built-in screen reader for what was then considered a niche community of blind students, many might have called him crazy. What followed was not only Apple’s rise as both a mainstream company and an accessibility leader, but a ripple effect which changed the whole industry and motivated our world’s largest companies to show that they, too, could develop technology that works for everyone. Part 1 includes discussion of Mike’s early days at Apple, and the events leading up to the creation of VoiceOver. Part 2 includes discussion of Apple from 2004-2013 and Mike’s ensuing work at Yahoo/Verizon, where he created a model for accessibility departments that has been recreated all over Silicon Valley.