Virgin atlantic launches autism training for staff
Shaun Heasley reported for Disability Scoop earlier this month Virgin Atlantic is training its staff on how best to interact with autistic passengers. The airline is working with accessible travel organization Autism Double-Checked in organizing this effort.
“Just ahead of the summer travel season, another airline is taking steps to be more welcoming toward travelers on the spectrum,” Heasley wrote on May 15. “Virgin Atlantic says that it will train all of its cabin crew on how to support individuals with autism and their families.”
Virgin Atlantic staff are expected to “complete two digital learning modules with information about autism generally and about identifying signs that an individual is distressed or overwhelmed,” with Heasley adding the training also will “provide guidance on how to adapt communication styles depending on a person’s needs and how to offer reassurance and support.” Moreover, Virgin Atlantic plans to extend the autism training to its consumer-facing ground crew such as gate agents and more.
“We know that for autistic customers and their families, flying can be a unique and unfamiliar environment which presents challenges,” said Becky Woodmansee, chief people officer at Virgin Atlantic. “By listening to our customers and working with autism travel specialists Autism Double-Checked, alongside our own people who have personal experience of autism, we’ve built a training programme that gives every crew member the understanding and confidence to make a real difference onboard.”
It’s good to see air travel become increasingly accessible to people with disabilities, and airline accessibility is a topic I’ve covered in the past. In my story earlier this week on the literal inaccessibility of premium seats at sporting events, I made parenthetical reference to how flying first class is, or can be, a de-facto accessibility feature for people. The majority of flights I’ve been on in the last several years have been riding first class; it isn’t about vanity or prestige for me—it’s about accessibility. To wit, as someone who copes with both low vision and cerebral palsy, it’s far easier for me to step onto the plane, make a quick turn, and immediately find my seat in one of the first few rows. By contrast, walking deeper into the bowels of the craft gives me anxiety because it’s harder to distinguish the rows and find my correct section, not to mention the extra steps it requires. Like courtside seats at an NBA game, first class seats are worth their weight in gold in terms of better accessibility. They both are more expensive because you get closer access, but they both provide actual practical utility to me as a disabled person that has nothing to do with bragging rights or whatever.
According to Heasley, Virgin Atlantic isn’t doing anything revolutionary. He noted Breezy Airlines instituted autism-friendly practices in 2022, while Emirates announced last year it trained 30,000 cabin crew and ground staff on serving autistic passengers.
Marvel to celebrate disability Pride month
I missed it at the time, but Marvel Comics announced at the end of April it was planning to celebrate Disability Pride Month this summer with what it called “an all-new saga starring heroes that represent strength and empowerment for the disability community.” The featured superheroes include Daredevil, Echo, and Hawkeye.
The Disability Pride Celebration is part of the Marvel’s Voices initiative, Marvel said.
“This July, Marvel Comics celebrates Disability Pride Month with an all-new saga starring heroes that represent strength and empowerment for the disability community. Written by Marieke Nijkamp (Hawkeye: Kate Bishop) and drawn by Andrea Di Vito (Emma Frost: The White Queen), the story will be told in special backup stories across four issues: Amazing Spider-Man #32, Uncanny X-Men #31, Fantastic Four #14 and Wolverine #24. Each issue will also feature a Disability Pride Variant Cover by one of several seminal artists: Jamie McKelvie, David Mack, Aaron Kuder, Leinil Francis Yu, and Stephen Segovia,” Marvel said in its April 30 announcement. “Intersecting with a range of different disabilities, the iconic characters spotlighted include Daredevil, Misty Knight, Echo, Hawkeye, Silhouette, and Finesse. This formidable group of heroes will come together to save Colleen Wing from a deadly threat in an action-packed story highlighting the power of community and uplifting one another.”
I found Marvel’s press release newsworthy because (a) I’ve always held a soft spot in my heart for superheroes; and (b) this is the first time I’ve seen, maybe ever, a (major) company actually acknowledge Disability Pride Month. I’m also reminded of the early days of the iPad, circa 2010–2011, when I downloaded the ComiXology app, now owned by Amazon, to read comics on the tablet’s “big” 9.7” display, mostly as a proof of concept that the iPad could provide a more accessible reading experience. I vividly remember being awestruck at the sheer size of the pages, as well as the bright and richly-detailed illustrations. I can only imagine the visual fidelity of comic books today on my OLED-equipped 13” M4 iPad Pro; maybe I should find out one of these days.
One part of Marvel’s press release had me rolling my eyes as I read it. Artist Andrea Di Vito said in part in a statement people with disabilities “prove to each and every one of us that the true measure of our worth is our spirit and our will, not the limitations of our bodies.” To me, this sentiment reads as inspiration porn and undermines Marvel’s broader representational goals with this project. Disabled people aren’t superhuman or superheroes; we are people first and foremost whose bodies have limitations, yes, but they’re things part and parcel to our identity—not obstacles to be overcome by our spirit or will. To imply otherwise is to play into long-held societal stereotypes about the disability community—which initiatives like Marvel’s are ostensibly existent to buck.
Lastly, a note on Echo. One of my earliest posts on Curb Cuts was a short piece on the miniseries on Disney+. As a CODA whose native language is ASL, I loved the show for amplifying Deaf voices and its comic book roots, and hope it returns someday for a second season. If you haven’t seen the first, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Roku announces redesigned home screen
San Jose-based Roku unveiled its platform’s new user interface for smart TVs on Wednesday. The company bills the refreshed software as “backed by years of consumer insights [which] leads to less time searching, more time streaming.”
“Today, Roku unveiled a new Home Screen that introduces a more dynamic, smarter experience and will reach over 100 million streaming households soon. With more relevant recommendations and faster pathways to content, the new Roku Home Screen reduces friction, maintains Roku’s signature simplicity, and helps viewers find their next favorite show with ease,” Roku wrote in its press release. “Today’s advancements mark the first significant update of the Roku Home Screen in over a decade. Guided by deep behavioral insights and viewer input, this update ensures every change is grounded in what users actually do, need, and value. The new personalized Home Screen tackles the biggest challenges in streaming, while offering a tailored, content-forward way to start watching.”
An overwhelming number of users, 82%, reported they “would love if they turned on their TV and the show they wanted to watch was right on their Home Screen,” adding the UI was built to do just that. The company also says the new Home Screen is meant to “[recommend] content based on your interests and helping you start watching faster.” Notably, and predictably, there’s an AI element: Roku says it’s leveraging its own intelligence models to “pick the best one for each viewer every time they turn on their TV.” There are “billions” of possible Home Screen combinations, Roku said.
“When we set out to rethink the Home Screen, we knew we should listen to the people who use it every day. So we talked to the viewers, we tested extensively, and we pushed until the design and the data lined up for a meaningful update,” Anthony Wood, Roku’s founder and CEO, said in a statement for the announcement. “Now, our new Home Screen puts entertainment at the center of everything, while staying true to Roku’s simple, intuitive roots. More than 100 million households will feel the difference the moment they turn on their TV—and it opens up a better, more powerful experience for our partners as well.”
The UI is rolling out “across all Roku TVs and streaming devices” in the United States.
Prior to getting my LG C3 OLED in January 2025, my living room television was the critically-acclaimed 2020 TCL 6-Series, which uses Mini-LED. That TV runs on Roku OS, which was fine—simple and straightforward and mostly unobtrusive—but I set the TV to automatically boot to my Apple TV 4K anyway. There’s merit in Roku OS from an accessibility perspective if you can’t afford an Apple TV box—again, it’s easy to grok—but I’m inclined to agree with Jason Snell’s take from March of last year when he wrote in part “Roku’s primary interface is a generic series of tiles. The whole thing feels dated, cheap, and generic.” Although I haven’t used one of Roku’s bespoke streaming devices in many years, I can say the Roku apps on that old TCL set were downright pokey in terms of performance. Say what you will for Apple’s ostensible inattentiveness towards tvOS compared to its brethren, the Apple TV’s hardware has never once felt sluggish or stifled. By contrast, the off-the-shelf processors powering Roku’s streamers barely can pass muster compared to the elite performance of the Apple TV 4K. I joke it’s over-engineered, but the delta between Roku’s chips is striking.
Roku posted a video showing off its new Home Screen. There’s a blog post too.
Evinced Announces ‘Evinced 500’ List
In a press release issued last week, Palo Alto-based web accessibility company Evinced announced its Evinced 500. Evinced described the list as "a new analysis assessing accessibility for the largest 500 enterprises in the U.S. (the Fortune 500).”
Evinced’s news was coincident with Global Accessibility Awareness Day last Thursday.
“The analysis found that Fortune 500 company websites averaged almost 20 accessibility issues per homepage,” Evinced wrote. “While this is a significant number, it does suggest that larger enterprises are performing better on accessibility than smaller ones. A widely cited annual study of one million website homepages, The WebAIM Million Report, most recently found 56 accessibility errors per homepage.”
Amongst the key findings by Evinced include 90% of the homepages on the websites of Fortunate 500 companies contained at least one accessibility issue, as well as financial services companies showing “some of the strongest accessibility performance among sectors analyzed.” By contrast, Evinced noted tech companies “showed some of the highest rates of accessibility problems.” The company said its findings “reinforce how accessibility maturity often correlates with organizational governance, operational rigor, and investment in modern development practices.”
More detailed information on Evinced’s Fortune 500 can be found in this blog post.
“This is still just the beginning of the accessibility story on websites," Navin Thadani, co-founder and CEO of Evinced, said in a statement for the press release. “Homepages are often the easiest pages to make accessible because they are static and heavily reviewed. The bigger challenge and the bigger opportunity lies deeper inside authenticated workflows, applications, dashboards, and transactional experiences where accessibility problems become harder to detect and more impactful for users. That’s where automation and developer-first tooling become essential.”
I’ve covered Evinced often over the years. I last spoke with Thadani in December 2024.
In related news, Mike Paciello, chief accessibility officer at AudioEye, wrote a post last week about the state of accessibility on the web. He said in part, although 15 years of Global Accessibility Awareness Day ought to be cause for celebration, this year feels like “a regression,” pointing to the WebAIM Million report that Evinced also referenced.
I interviewed Paciello in January 2024 when he first took the job at AudioEye.
Amazon’s Recent Kindle Neurodiversity Survey
In marking Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Amazon published a blog post wherein the company shared details on a Kindle survey it recently conducted. The survey focused on reading tools available on the Kindle platform for neurodivergent readers.
“A new survey conducted by Amazon Kindle reveals that nearly two-thirds of neurodivergent readers report abandoning books they were genuinely interested in because of issues with reading formats, and over half of neurodivergent readers say their confidence drops when reading takes longer than others,” Amazon wrote.
Amazon goes on to report how, for neurodivergent people, the ability to customize the reading experience is integral to shaping a positive experience. The company said 30% of those in the neurodivergent community read for longer periods, whilst 32% say they feel more confident. One in five adults identify as neurodivergent, with Amazon noting “this means millions of adults are absorbing this friction when reading,impacting their enjoyment and ability to read.” Low confidence while reading is a barrier to accessibility; Amazon found over a third of people read only privately and almost two-thirds avoid reading in certain settings, like around other people, because they feel self-conscious. Finally, Amazon emphasizes the “time and energy” it takes for neurodivergent people to read, writing they “lose an average of eight minutes per reading session—nearly a whole day per year—re-reading sentences or paragraphs.”
“The barriers for neurodivergent readers often aren’t with their motivation—they are with how the book is delivered,” Peter Korn, Amazon’s director of accessibility for Amazon devices and services, said in the post. “When the book adapts to the individual, rather than the other way around, barriers melt away form any readers.”
Elsewhere, Amazon spotlights MissSunshine, a high school teacher and content creator who’s neurodivergent and has a prosthetic eye. Amazon describes her as “[understanding] the confidence struggle when reading,” with Sunshine telling the company she uses a Kindle Scribe to read, which empowers her to “adjust features, including fonts and lighting, to match how her brain processes text on any given day.” Sunshine is featured in Amazon’s “Unapologetica11y” campaign, billed by the company as “a series spotlighting real customers with disabilities using Amazon devices in their everyday lives.” The name is meant to “[honor] bold individuals living their life.”
“I use the OpenDyslexic text font on Kindle, which is where they adjust the font on the book to be one that is easier for people with dyslexia to read like myself,” Sunshine said to Amazon of her tech choices in an interview. “I also utilize the Assistive Reader feature, which is where the book itself will be read aloud to the scholar, whoever’s reading it, my student or myself. It makes a huge difference for me when reading.”
Amazon has posted a video on MissSunshine to YouTube.
Courtside Seats have a Major privilege problem
ESPN ran a story over the long weekend about the celebrities who’ve been spotted in attendance at NBA playoff games this postseason. The story leads with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce attending Game 3 of the Cavaliers-Knicks series from Cleveland.
“The stars are out at the 2026 NBA playoffs,” ESPN wrote. “Given that opening slate of games included two matchups at Madison Square Garden and the Crypto.com Arena, it’s no surprise that the NBA playoffs had stars to spare off the bat. Celebrities have been a constant presence throughout the postseason, cheering on their favorite teams. Here are some of the biggest names in attendance in the postseason.”
Other celebs at various games include Martha Stewart, Michael J. Fox, and Eminem.
Believe it or not, there’s an accessibility angle to my choice to cover this news. It should be noted up front, however, I don’t begrudge people like Swift for attending a basketball game; these are people too who love their team(s) and want to be entertained and enjoy themselves. What makes their attendance special is precisely because they live atop society’s le gratin—they live along the upper crust, replete with the money to, in the case of Eminem and 50 Cent, pay for courtside seats during the last round’s Cavaliers-Pistons series. And that’s where the accessibility angle lies.
At sporting events and concerts, convention dictates the closer one wants to be to the action, the more expensive the tickets. It was reported this weekend two NBA Finals courtside seats at New York’s Madison Square Garden were purchased on StubHub for close to $280,000 in anticipation of the Knicks—currently holders of a 3–0 series lead over the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals—making their first Finals appearance since 1999. What does this mean? It means only the most affluent, wealthiest people in America—celebs included—can afford arguably the most accessible seats in the venue. It also means the majority of people, including those who are Blind and low vision, can’t access those seats because they’re exorbitantly expensive. Ipso facto, a Blind person will assuredly have a suboptimal experience—mainly because they aren’t haves like Taylor Swift or Martha Stewart who have knots.
This rankles me because courtside seats in particular are the most accessible seats in the whole arena. A person’s ability to pay shouldn’t preclude them from accessing those seats if, as a practical matter, the seats are the best way for them to enjoy the action. For Blind people specifically, there are devices from companies like OneCourt, which uses tactile pulses to track gameplay. The NBA’s Sacramento Kings uses them at Golden1 Center, which I covered last year. As good as OneCourt’s technology is, though, the fact remains the person probably still uses the device from a place pretty far flung from the court. Blindness is a spectrum after all, so it would be better if someone could use their OneCourt tablet from a closer vantage point. But, again, that isn’t going to happen unless you can pay for the privilege… of being closer to the game.
A year or two ago, ESPN’s Sam Borden reached out to me via email asking if I’d want to be interviewed for a story on people with disabilities attending live sporting events. I happily agreed, and while my comments didn’t make the published piece, I found participating a cathartic experience—and I was heartened that an able-bodied reporter like Borden was even thinking about such a subject. As a diehard sports fan, I don’t really like attending live events in part because I know the game will be relatively inaccessible. Much of the experience is sullied if, for instance, you have to keep asking the person sitting next to you what’s going on down on the field besides using crowd noise as a proxy. I have vision, and I would have much more agency if I, say, could sit behind home plate or the dugout because I’m closer to the action. I shouldn’t have to possess a six-figure bank ledger in order to attain that level of immersion; it’s not vanity… it’s accessibility. (See also: flying first class instead of settling for economy.)
I’m not arguing front-row seats be made free. I’m arguing it only makes sense some number of “accessible” seating be reserved in closer-in areas without an elitist price.
Celebs get good seats because they can. Disabled people should get them for need.
In Praise of text on tvOS
Across my constellation of Apple devices, I like to keep the user interface as “stock” as possible. I like to retain the out-of-the-box design, then layer accessibility features atop of it as necessary. I believe this approach gives me the best opportunity to experience (and critique) Apple’s software design decisions while sprinkling in the accessibility features I require for usability; I think it’s instructive, analysis-wise, to gauge where Apple is trying to serve the mainstream without a plethora of assistive technologies “subverting” their perspective. So, on macOS for instance, I use the default resolution as-is, then add features like Hover Text and Large Text—I don’t necessarily want the scaled-up resolution on my Pro Display XDR because its 32” screen is itself plenty large to compensate for most places where text is unreadable.
tvOS is a different beast, however. I mentioned it only in passing in my report, but arguably one of my favorite new accessibility features Apple announced ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day last week is tvOS is gaining support for larger text sizes. The cynical take would be to shrug your shoulders and glibly say the system should’ve had it years ago, and I’d probably agree, but here we are. Better late than never, amirite? Regardless, even on a screen as massive as my 77” LG C3 OLED, text is small—especially when reading show or episode descriptions; yes, there’s Zoom and Hover Text there as well, but again, I like to keep things clean. When I want to read something—even something like a chyron on a news broadcast—sometimes I’ll get up off the couch and walk up to the TV so I can read what I want, then go sit back down. It’s certainly one way of adapting to my environment, and most certainly another way to bask in the gloriousness of OLED televisions, but it isn’t ideal. Thus, last week’s news that tvOS will soon receive support for larger text sizes filled me with delight. I expect to enable the setting as I get the update come fall when the new iPhones, et al, ship.
A corollary to the larger text sizes is the revamped captions/subtitles appearance in tvOS. As I wrote in March, one of the notable feature additions to tvOS 26.4 was the ability to customize the look of one’s captions and/or subtitles. As someone who’s a CODA and whose first language is ASL, I can’t comfortably watch TV without captions.
At 44, I’m old enough to remember a time, circa the late ’80s-early ‘90s, when my parents had a set-top box dedicated to producing captions, sitting on top of our VCR. The captioning box plugged into the TV and would feed it captions, which would then display on screen so my parents could understand whatever dialogue there was; the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 mandated that TVs be built with captions by default, so by the time we got our big new 27” Magnavox set in 1994, it obviated the need for our aforementioned captioning box. I remember the new TV’s functionality as being revelatory to my parents, although it didn’t preclude them from also using me, their eldest kid, as an in-home interpreter to decipher words or phrases they didn’t understand. Anyway, the salient point here is only that captions are an integral part of my TV-watching experience—but, they too, can be too small for me to comfortably see.
Last night, I went down a rabbit hole of sorts and enabled the Large Text setting for captions. By default, they’re presented in a rectangular transparent black box in Apple’s San Francisco font. I went into Settings, however, and changed the typeface to my beloved SF Mono, which I’m staring at right now in MarkEdit as I write this very story. I generally prefer san-serif fonts—Curb Cuts uses Coda—but I like the nostalgic feel of a monospace font for captions. It takes me back to the days with that old box. Aesthetically, the Large Text option in SF Mono looks terrific; Apple knows how to make nice-looking, proportional interfaces using larger text. This feature is a keeper for me.
I first tried the new captions in the TV app as I watched an episode of For All Mankind. Then I tried other apps, like PBS and Disney+, which also uses the system video player. It even worked in Pluto TV. (I haven’t yet looked at Netflix or Prime Video.) I don’t know if Apple has limited the redesigned captions to the system video player in tvOS, but if it is, it’s one more reason for developers to use it. I’ll play around with it more tonight, but I heartily recommend checking out the Large Text captions. It’s a really great feature.
On AI And ‘the people it often misses’
To mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day this week, Microsoft published a blog post wherein the company addresses the dire need for artificial intelligence models to properly account for people with disabilities. The post was written by Susanna Ray.
“Ask an AI tool for a picture of ‘someone at work,’ and you’ll often get a person at a desk, in front of a computer, maybe holding a coffee cup. When people with disabilities appear at all, the images sometimes have been jarringly wrong: amputees with extra limbs, blindness portrayed with blindfolds, those with dwarfism sporting huge, pointy ears,” she wrote on Thursday. “The problem isn’t intent; it’s absence. AI systems can only learn from the data they’re trained on and the criteria used to judge their outputs. For many groups—including the estimated 1.3 billion people living with disabilities—there hasn’t been enough focus on representation online to shape either.”
Ray goes on to mention Microsoft is working alongside numerous organizations, including Kilimanjaro Blind Trust Africa, based in Nairobi, to ensure “AI-generated imagery reflects how people with vision disabilities actually live and work.” In addition, the company also is closely working with other communities in an effort to “build libraries of images that depict them in a more accurate and representative way,” adding “those groups can offer the datasets to tech companies and others for training and testing AI systems, a process that typically requires thousands of examples.”
Most poignantly, and the crux, Ray writes “research in media and social science has long shown that how groups of people are portrayed shapes how society thinks about them, with direct influence on access to things like education and employment.”
Microsoft’s post is well worth a read in its entirety. As a person with disabilities, I’m mostly bullish on AI’s potential as an assistive technology from a pragmatic perspective. But it is equally important that AI agents be trained with the most comprehensive dataset possible—which entails accurately and authentically portraying the disability community. These systems aren’t sentient beings; they must be fed information, so their “aptitude” is only as good as the information they’re given. Likewise, while something like ChatGPT is effective in helping, say, someone code or write an email, its appeal—and its utility—is somewhat stunted if, for instance, it never shows a wheelchair user in a workplace environment doing their job like anyone else.
Reading Ray’s post had me drawing parallels to disability coverage in mainstream media. For the breathlessness with which tech news outlets have reporters cover AI, nary a word is said for the technology’s impact on the disability community. Likewise, nary a word is said for disability-in-tech coverage in general—stuff like AI is seen as more important, more traffic-worthy, with accessibility news only mattering during token events like Global Accessibility Awareness Day or themed “accessibility weeks.” While these special times on editorial calendars are a good idea in a vacuum, it’s the journalistic equivalent of shuttering the holiday lights in storage the first 11 months of the year until after Thanksgiving when it’s Christmastime—then they will go up.
Newsrooms, and AI models, must be better at dignifying people like me.
Cvent Accessibility Boss: ‘Inclusivity shouldn't be a differentiator. It Should be the baseline’
For Stephen Cutchins, the director of accessibility at event logistics company Cvent, disability is part and parcel of his being. Cutchins has Tourette’s Syndrome, his mother was an amputee, and he spent his summers growing up with cousins who coped with cerebral palsy and were wheelchair users. These six degrees of separation to disability means accessibility is obviously a non-negotiable way of life to Cutchins and his orbit.
“This isn’t just work for me. It’s about the people I love,” he said to me over email.
Cutchins, a Virginia Tech graduate with a degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering, has devoted over the last two decades of his life to embedding an accessibility-first mindset within various companies. He was working in Washington DC as a consultant on a project which required Section 508 compliance, something he’d previously never heard of. The topic immediately got him in a vise grip, and the more he learned about it, the more interested he became. In the early days of his career, Cutchins’ work in accessibility entailed quality control efforts like testing screen readers and observing disabled people use products. Later, his work involved helping others develop their own accessibility practices. That led him to joining Cvent.
Cutchins described Cvent as “one of the world’s leading event management technology platforms,” telling me his current role involves ensuring the company’s software, and the events that run atop of it, “are as accessible and inclusive as possible.” He noted it’s no coincidence many of the top disability-oriented conferences rely on Cvent’s platform, as the organizations who host them “have exceptionally high standards for digital accessibility.” Cutchins said earning, and maintaining, people’s trust is paramount and “a point of real pride” for him and Cvent.
When asked why accessibility matters so much to Cvent, Cutchins made the analogy that digital accessibility is to the web what physical curb cuts are to sidewalks. They’re both relatively simple things that can have immense impact on people because they promote empathy and inclusiveness. If software isn’t accessible, Cutchins said, that signals to the disability community their needs don’t matter and, frankly, they aren’t welcome. This stance is made worse by the fact Cutchins noted roughly 26% of the population copes with some sort of disability, which he rightly said is “not a niche audience.” In other words, a quarter of the population ought to be able to accessibly register for and attend conferences, appear on stage, and socialize like anyone else.
“We have a responsibility to make sure our platform enables all of that,” Cutchins said of Cvent’s North Star. “Beyond the moral imperative, it’s just good business, and our clients are realizing that more and more. These are people who want to spend money and participate. The question is whether the technology, the venue, and the event experience are making it possible for them to do so.”
Cutchins stated the obvious in telling me one of the biggest barriers to digital access is inaccessible software. He explained many event planners are coordinating events using tools that decidedly weren’t designed with accessibility in mind, which he said “creates problems from the start.” Part of the solution, he added, is choosing software that natively addresses accessibility out of the box; that’s Cvent’s modus operandi, with Cutchins emphasizing accessibility should be “baked in, not bolted on” by all companies, of all industries. The corollary to this problem is many, if not most, event planners presume disabled people won’t attend their thing. This bias, Cutchins told me, is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as no one shows up to events because they aren’t accessible in the first place. What do you do in this situation? “Ask,” Cutchins said.
He added: “When someone registers, ask what accommodations they need. Captions, sign language interpreters, low sensory rooms, whatever it might be. The more planners that proactively normalize the question, the more comfortable people with disabilities will feel showing up. The more they show up, the more planners realize the audience has always been there—they’ve just been waiting to be welcomed properly.”
Disabled people don’t want extras, Cutchins said. They want dignity.
“They just want an equal opportunity to participate. They want your website to work with their screen reader. They want to be able to register for an event without hitting a digital wall. They want to get up on stage in a wheelchair and deliver a keynote,” he said. “We also hear from the neurodiverse community. Those voices help guide how we build, test, and improve our products.”
Apropos of our interview happening ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Cutchins told me accessibility awareness has “come so far” in the last 20 years—but, as ever, there is still much progress to be made. The industry, he noted, sees the word discrimination as a dirty word, but the reality is digital inaccessibility is functionally discriminatory. The good news, according to Cutchins, is accessibility awareness has ratcheted up dramatically, particularly since the pandemic forced everyone to rethink how they’d access work, school, and socialization. The virtual-by-necessity nature of communication during COVID’s apex (or nadir, if you prefer) meant many more disabled people could be meaningfully included in meetings and other get-togethers.
Moreover, Cutchins told me artificial intelligence is “changing the economics of accessibility” and cited automated captioning as one example. The end result may not be quite as good as professional captioning companies like VITAC, who uses a hybrid “man versus machine” approach in creating good captions, but there will be growth—and there’s a bigger win. “[AI is making] accessible events possible at price points that weren’t realistic before,” Cutchins said. “Technology is helping close the gap.”
As to feedback, Cutchins called it “genuinely encouraging.” It means a lot to him that so many of the aforementioned heavy-hitter disability conferences from organizations like CSUN and the National Federation of the Blind trust Cvent to run their events. These organizations “know accessibility inside and out,” Cutchins said, "so their trust is not something we take lightly.” More broadly, Cutchins noted accessibility awareness is increasing in urgency, with more and more people asking for it—especially so recently in areas like local governments and institutions of higher leaning as the recently-delayed Title II web accessibility mandates remain top of mind in terms of compliance, which he said is “a significant shift from even a few years ago.”
“The bigger indicator of success to me is when accessibility stops being treated as ‘innovative’ or ‘exceptional’ and starts being treated as table stakes,” Cutchins said. “That’s the cultural shift we’re working toward. Inclusivity shouldn’t be a differentiator; it should just be the baseline.”
Looking towards the future, Cutchins said it’s his hope event planners eventually operate under the assumption disabled people do and will attend their events provided they’re accessible. The key is to be proactive in building in accessibility from the very beginning, adding he’d love to see more emphasis put on accommodating the neurodiverse community by way of quiet rooms, self-checkin options, and more.
“That’s what I love about accessibility: When it’s done right, it just makes things better for everyone,” Cutchins said.
One way or another, people are going to have to reckon long-term with accessibility.
“Organizations are going to have to deal with this whether they are ready or not,” Cutchins said. “I would much rather help them get ahead of it than watch them scramble to catch up. The opportunity to do that is really what keeps me going.”
Ubisoft Announces support for AGI Tags
Ubisoft marked Global Accessibility Awareness Day on Thursday with a blog post in which it launched support for Accessible Games Initiative tags for disabled gamers.
“Accessibility is a priority for Ubisoft, from considering accessibility at the early stages of game development to communicating accessibility features before each game’s launch through our ongoing article series, Accessibility Spotlights,” wrote Ubisoft’s Brittany Spurlin. “Last March, Ubisoft announced it was a founding member of the Accessible Games Initiative, an Entertainment Software Association (ESA) project. The Accessible Games Initiative created a tagging system so players with disabilities can find games that meet their accessibility needs.”
Ubisoft is doing a “progressive” rollout with Rayman: 30th Anniversary Edition and said more titles will be added “throughout the year.” A few of the supported AGI tags include Narrated Menus, Save Anytime, Full Input Remapping, and Color Alternatives.
“With each passing year, our developers are opening up game worlds to more players,” David Tisserand, Ubisoft’s director of accessibility, said in a statement for the announcement. “While we’re communicating on it through our Accessibility Spotlights and our Customer Support, there is no better place to find this information than where players make the decision to buy a game or not. Coupled with the consistency that the Accessible Games Initiative Tags bring, players are now able to assess the accessibility of our games based on a clear convention they know and trust.”
I covered the Accessible Games Initiative (AGI) back in April 2025, posting an interview with ESA senior vice president Aubrey Quinn. A few months later, in July, I posted about Xbox adding support for the AGI tags for its own platform.
As Spurlin noted, Ubisoft is a founding member of the Accessible Games Initiative alongside fellow heavyweights in Electronic Arts, Nintendo of America, and others.
Sony Announces New PlayStation Studios Accessibility Community Council
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) on Thursday marked Global Accessibility Awareness Day by announcing the all-new PlayStation Studios Accessibility Community Council. The dek reads “Powering Accessibility Through Community.”
“The PlayStation Studios Accessibility Community Council is a dedicated, global group of 15 third-party accessibility consultants with a broad range of access needs working in ongoing partnership with our studios. The Council combines lived experience with deep expertise, helping game development teams move beyond assumptions and design with greater confidence and clarity,” SIE wrote. “The Council’s insights are embedded directly into development. Through Accessibility Play Days and targeted research, council members provide feedback on in-development games, helping teams identify barriers early and prioritise meaningful improvements. Alongside this, they work with Studios through talks and Inclusive Design Workshops, building accessibility knowledge and confidence across teams. The Council also serves as an ongoing forum for discussion, sharing perspectives on emerging topics, community sentiment, and player experience across PlayStation.”
Among the Council’s members are my friend James Rath, as well as Steve Saylor. Longtime readers may recall Saylor’s name appearing in a feature story I wrote in 2024 about the inner workings of AbleGamers. He’s a renowned video game consultant.
For Sony’s part, it says in its post its North Star is “[building a] future for players of all abilities,” adding accessibility is “a core part of this mission, ensuring more players can enjoy, engage with, and see themselves reflected in the games we create.”
“When we understand the perspectives from gamers with lived experience it leads to the creation of new and innovative accessibility features,” the company said.
In related news, one of the accessibility features Apple announced this week is support for Sony’s Access Controller for PlayStation. In 2023, I published a deep dive story chronicling the development of the accessory, including interviews with executives.
Netflix Shares ‘Latest Steps’ To better Accessibility
In marking Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Netflix published a blog post in which it detailed its “latest steps to make content more accessible.” The post is uncredited.
“Great stories are for everyone—and at Netflix, that’s something we build toward every day,” the company wrote on Thursday. “Nearly a third of our members worldwide use accessibility tools and features to find and enjoy the stories they love. On Global Accessibility Awareness Day, here’s a look at how we’re making that experience better and where we’re headed next.”
Netflix touts the ever-burgeoning globalization of its platform, noting it’s available in more than 190 countries; in fact, one-third of the company’s programming are non-English series, whereas a decade ago it represented one-tenth of viewership. In 2025, 70% of Netflix watching “came from members watching a title from a country other than their own,” according to the company. Relatedly, Netflix content supports accessibility features such as subtitles, captions, audio descriptions, and dubbing in over 30 languages. There’s even a “Search By Language” function, which Netflix describes as “a new search update that lets members find TV shows and movies by language and accessibility features directly from the search bar, on any device.”
Elsewhere, Netflix said it added “more than 13,000 hours” of audio description spanning 34 languages last year. Moreover, there are future plans in the works for adding more localization, including in American Sign Language, a la HBO Max.
Finally, Netflix gives a shoutout to its Amplifying Accessibility Awareness collection, described as “a dedicated space to discover stories that authentically spotlight the perspectives of people living with disabilities.” The collection, available through May 31, includes shows like Love on the Spectrum and All The Light We Cannot See. As to the latter, I covered it back in 2023 and even attended my first-ever screening for it.
Apple Sports Expands, Adds World cup Coverage
Apple this week announced it has updated Apple Sports such that the app “adds new markets and expanded coverage.” Apple Sports, still iPhone-only, is now available in more than 90 countries and regions, as well as ready for this year’s FIFA World Cup.
The World Cup begins on June 11. It will be jointly held in 16 cities, 11 in the United States.
“Apple Sports is helping fans get ready for the World Cup by allowing them to explore tournament groupings and customize their scoreboards simply by following the entire tournament or their favorite national teams—making it easier to stay on top of key moments when the tournament kicks off in June,” Apple wrote in its announcement posted on Tuesday. “Following a team also enables Live Activities on a user’s iPhone Lock Screen or Apple Watch, letting them follow every moment of a match with just a quick glance. Fans can also add widgets to their iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Home Screens to track the progress of the tournament in real time. With Apple Sports, fans can easily jump to the Apple TV app with a single tap to find live matches on connected streaming services throughout the tournament.”
This week’s software update brings with it features like a “clean [and] scrollable” tournament bracket view, “enhanced game cards” which enable users to view their favorite team(s) strategic decisions, and one-tap access to Apple News to what Apple is calling “comprehensive editorial coverage” of all the action on the pitch.
“The World Cup unites fans across the globe, making it the ideal moment to bring Apple Sports to even more users,” Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Music, Sports, Apple TV, and Beats, said in a statement included with the announcement. “Apple Sports was designed to be fast and simple, giving fans an easy way to stay on top of scores, stats, and the action that matters most in real time.”
As a diehard sports fan, I love Apple Sports; it’s one of my favorite, most-used apps and has entrenched itself on my iPhone Air’s Home Screen. I have most of the local teams, in men’s and women’s leagues, favorited in the app, and use Live Activities almost on a daily basis to follow, say, a Giants or Valkyries game, depending on the season. My only real gripe about Apple Sports is it’s not yet on iPad, and I watch these update stories like a hawk only because I dream of the day Apple says Apple Sports has come to iPadOS. I have zero little birdies, but I can’t imagine Apple Sports for iPad isn’t being worked on somewhere in Apple Park. For now, however, I like to think Apple Sports on iPad is the new Calculator on iPad, which finally appeared in 2024 after a 14-year wait. Let’s hope Apple Sports needn’t wait that long—that would be a true travesty for me.
In other soccer (or fútbol) news, John Voorhees at MacStories reports Apple has announced a documentary shot in Apple Immersive for Vision Pro, called Real Madrid: The Weight of Greatness, that’s set to debut this Friday. There’s a trailer on YouTube.
Speaking of FIFA, I posted an interview with its accessibility coordinator last July about how soccer’s governing body was making the Club World Cup accessible to everyone.
Apple Previews Latest Accessibility Features
In what’s become an annual tradition, Apple on Tuesday marked Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) by previewing new accessibility features slated to ship with its operating systems “later this year.” GAAD, now in its 15th year, is this Thursday, May 21.
“Apple today previewed a suite of accessibility updates that use Apple Intelligence to bring new capabilities to features users rely on every day, including VoiceOver, Magnifier, Voice Control, and Accessibility Reader,” the company wrote in an announcement posted to its Newsroom site. “Apple also announced on-device generated subtitles for uncaptioned video content coming to the Apple ecosystem, as well as a new feature for Apple Vision Pro users to control compatible wheelchairs with their eyes. These new features, as well as updates using Apple Intelligence, are coming later this year. And starting today, the Hikawa Grip & Stand for iPhone—an adaptive MagSafe accessory designed with accessibility at the core—is available in three vibrant new colors on the Apple Store online."
“The accessibility features our users rely on every day become even more powerful with Apple Intelligence,” Sarah Herrlinger, Apple’s senior director of global accessibility policy and initiatives, said in a statement included with the announcement. “With these updates, we’re bringing new, intuitive options for input, exploration, and personalization—designed to protect users’ privacy at every step.”
Arguably the headliner feature are the enhancements to VoiceOver and Magnifier. Apple says both have been souped-up using Apple Intelligence, with both now having the ability to describe one’s surroundings. The Image Explorer in VoiceOver leans on Apple Intelligence to “give more detailed descriptions of images systemwide, including what’s in photographs, scanned bills, personal records, and other visual content,” while Live Recognition has been updated to allow users to press the iPhone’s Action Button to “quickly ask a question about what’s in the camera viewfinder and get a detailed response” and users can use their own voice to ask follow-up questions. As to Magnifier’s new capabilities, it brings with it the very same image exploration functionality as VoiceOver. The difference is it presents the information in a high-contrast, large text format for those (like me!) with low vision.
A good way to conceptualize Image Explorer is it’s Be My Eyes without the human.
Another interesting addition is something Apple calls Wheelchair Control for Vision Pro. The feature, which is positioned as “a responsive input method for compatible alternative drive systems,” uses Vision Pro’s advanced eye-tracking technology such that wheelchair users needn’t recalibrate their systems. One of the launch partners for this is LUCI, whom I covered back in 2020. Apple is pledging to work with developers to “expand support” for Wheelchair Control over time. It seems like a great feature, but I do wonder about the pragmatism of wearing Vision Pro for prolonged periods. Heavy is the head that wears the headset, as I know all too well, and I’m skeptical whether a wheelchair user eventually might begin to feel fatigued from wearing Vision Pro so long. As someone who’s not a wheelchair user, I can’t imagine wanting to exclusively rely on Vision Pro to control my chair, accessibility be damned. At the very least, a cogent argument could be made Vision Pro can present a variety of sensory challenges due to being “cooped up” in Vision Pro’s enclosure, even for a few minutes.
Other features Apple announced are scheduled to arrive later in the year are generated subtitles/captions across Apple’s platforms, natural language support in Voice Control, Vehicle Motion Cues in visionOS, and larger text size options (!) in tvOS.
Apple is primed to unveil its upgraded operated systems in only a few short weeks.
Apple Sends Media Invites to WWDC 2026 Keynote
Apple on Monday sent members of the media invitations to this year’s WWDC keynote.
I got one, so I’ll be at Apple Park on June 8. I’ll be covering my 13th (🤯) WWDC.
Apple is expected to unveil the next generations of its panoply of operating systems.
In other WWDC news, Apple revealed the finalists for the Apple Design Awards. The ADAs, as the honors are colloquially known, celebrate numerous apps strewn across different categories, for their outstanding craftsmanship. One area is called Inclusivity, and one of the accessibility apps nominated this year is Hearing Buddy. From United States-based developer Lilly Seay, who has hearing loss, Apple describes Hearing Buddy as “shaped by experience, [as the] thoughtful app uses the Foundation Models framework and on-device speech-to-text features to quickly generate real-time captions and summaries of spoken conversations,” adding Seay’s software is “reliable, supportive, and easy to work with, it’s everything you need in a good buddy.”
Hearing Buddy is available on iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS.
GitHub’s ‘General-Purpose Accessibility Agent’
GitHub’s Eric Bailey wrote last week in a blog post about the company’s efforts to build what’s called “a general-purpose accessibility agent.” The program is deemed “experimental,” with the pilot reinforcing GitHub’s commitment to accessibility.
“It is an understatement to say agents have become a popular way of working with code,” Bailey said on Friday. “GitHub has adopted agent-based code creation and editing for many of its initiatives, including piloting an agent to help with our commitment to accessibility.”
Apropos of GitHub’s ethos, Bailey’s post is pretty technical in nature. He cogently states up front, though, the accessibility agent has two primary goals: (1) provide engineers with reliable, timely answers to accessibility-centric questions; and (2) identifying and remediating issues prior to code going into production. The agent has reviewed 3,535 pull requests with a 68% resolution rate thus far, according to Bailey.
Notably, the “Mindset” section of Bailey’s post is well worth a shoutout.
“The social model of disability teaches us that access barriers—and consequently impairment—can be created because of how an environment is built. The same thinking applies to digital experiences,” he wrote. “With the accessibility agent, we are not attempting to ‘solve’ accessibility in isolation. We are instead attempting to augment our peers’ efforts, to better help them remove the barriers that may be created as a result of how we construct GitHub’s user interfaces.”
Bailey continues to say the accessibility is no silver bullet that can magically fix everything, adding “understanding, honoring, and socializing this better helps set the agent’s scope of responsibility.” This approach, he noted, has helped a lot to “[speed] up the experiment’s launch, leading to more buy-in for the effort.”
More poignancy from Bailey: “To say it plainly: Organizations will be at a disadvantage if they have not already invested in manually identifying and remediating accessibility issues. There are many reasons for this, including building an accessibility agent. To that point, GitHub has a mature system in place for logging accessibility issues, as well as verifying fixes to issues are working as intended.”
For all the handwringing in some design spaces about the rise in prominence of artificial intelligence in software development leading to perhaps trading craft for expediency, there can be no denying the impressiveness of the technological feat in things like, say, Claude Code to aid programmers in their work. By the same token, this rise is also beneficial for coders with disabilities who, for instance, may be unable to endure long work sessions that involve producing hundreds of lines of code. To have the ability to give an agent a few-sentence prompt of what they need or what and have it virtually instantaneously generated is a remarkable assistive technology. And to GitHub’s efforts, the idea that leveraging AI to help track accessibility when writing code is to lean on a computer’s greatest strength: automation. Humans can do only so much, so the one-two punch of the proverbial man and machine can only help to make computers and the internet more accessible to disabled people. As I’ve written in the recent past, ChatGPT did a lot to assist me, the decided non-web developer, generate CSS/JavaScript code for Curb Cuts’ visual design. The chatbot gave me good code, too!
Relatedly: My 2023 interview with GitHub accessibility boss, Ed Summers.
‘NHL × ASL’ Nabs two sports Emmy Nominations
Mark J. Burns reported for Sports Video Group this past week the National Hockey League’s NHL Productions has been nominated for two Sports Emmys—double last year—in the Outstanding Live Sports Special: Non-Championship Event and Outstanding Interactive Experience: Sports categories for its NHL × ASL series, of which the league has produced 19 since debuting with the 2024 Stanley Cup Finals.
“The big-time productions, currently in their third year at the league level, are dedicated to the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community and are part of an effort to make NHL games more accessible and give more hockey fans an opportunity to experience the sport,” Burns wrote.
“To be honored with two Emmy nominations in one year is incredibly meaningful,” said Matt Celli, group vice president and coordinating director at NHL Productions. “The team is very humbled to be nominated for two Emmys, especially when you look at the other finalists. We are proud of the recognition and prouder of our ability to service this community. We know that we are producing a truly special and unique show for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing hockey fans. The impact is real, and that makes this rewarding.”
Not only have I been watching this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs on ABC/ESPN/TNT, I’ve covered the “NHL × ASL” extensively over the last few years; it meshes my love of sports with my personal background as a CODA whose native language is American Sign Language. The league works alongside Deaf inclusion company PXP in creating the ASL simulcast, and I interviewed its co-founder and CEO, Brice Christianson, in November 2024 all about it. Like me, he’s a CODA, and effusively praised the NHL for its commitment to making hockey inclusive to the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community.
This year’s Sports Emmys awards are scheduled for May 26 in New York City.
EU iPhone Users gain ‘proximity pairing’ in iOS 26.5
Juli Clover reported earlier this week for MacRumors iPhone users in the European Union (EU) now have access to various interoperability features such as the AirPods-like pairing process, as well as notification forwarding for third-party wearables. The features were included with the advent of iOS 26.5, also released publicly this week.
“iOS 26.5 introduces several interoperability changes for third-party wearables, which means European iPhone users have access to new capabilities when using non-Apple accessories,” Clover wrote on Monday. “To comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, Apple is letting third-party wearables access some features that have historically been limited to the Apple Watch and AirPods.”
From an accessibility standpoint, the so-called “proximity pairing” feature is most relevant in my purview. Clover describes it as “[bringing] a set of earbuds that support the feature near an iPhone will initiate an AirPods-like one-tap pairing process so third-party wearables like earbuds will no longer require multiple steps to pair.”
The multi-step process Clover refers to is having to navigate to the Bluetooth portion of Settings, find the device(s) in the list, and then tap its name to initiate a connection. In an accessibility context, that can be a lot of steps for someone to take to pair their non-Apple earbuds with their iPhone. Pointedly, it introduces a rigamarole of cognitive/motor/visual movements that adds friction to the experience; one of those is hard enough, but some combination thereof can plausibly be untenable in terms of literal strain. Part of the “magic” of AirPods is the setup flow itself, one which functions as a de-facto accessibility feature. Not only does pairing happen automatically, Apple takes it a step further by leveraging iCloud to also propagate pairing with one’s other constellation of devices in their personal Apple galaxy. As I’ve written many times before, most nerds and tech reviewers beam about this setup process as one of convenience—and they’re not wrong in saying so—but accessibleness and convenience are not one and the same. In other words, what’s convenient to you—something akin to the free breakfast at Hampton Inn, for example—may well be utterly life-changing to me in terms of enjoying AirPods. It should be obvious there exist people with disabilities in the EU who yearn for a more accessible setup procedure.
Of note, Clover writes accessory manufacturers are responsible for “[adding] support for the interoperability updates, so they may not be available right away.”
Apple introduced its AccessorySetupKit API in 2024 for third-party developers to use.
Report: ‘Severance’ Season 3 Due ‘Much Sooner’
Jake Kanter and Nada Aboul Kheir reported last week for Deadline the next season of Severance is planned to premiere “much sooner” than Season 2 did in January 2025. The comments were made by star Adam Scott, who gets top billing as Mark S. in the show, during a red carpet interview at this year’s BAFTA TV Awards, held in London.
As Kanter and Kheir noted, there was a three-year wait between the end of Season 1 and the release of Season 2. According to Scott, “we’re always trying to shorten the amount of time between seasons, but it’s more important for it to be great than for it to be fast.” He also said the production team is “definitely planning” on getting the third season out sooner than later while conceding the aforementioned gap was “too long.”
Severance absolutely is on my seemingly ever-growing list of shows to rewatch, but I may move it further up the list after writing this post. It is undoubtedly one of my most favorite TV shows of the last few years, maybe even of all-time. Many of my favorite movies and television shows are Apple TV properties; Dickinson, For All Mankind, The Morning Show, and CODA are numerous other titles I also dearly love. My jaw hit the floor at the end of the Season 2 finale—no spoilers from me here, go watch it yourself—and I can’t wait for the day Apple announces the start date for Season 3. Praise Kier.
Season 3 will begin shooting “very soon,” Scott added.
As I wrote last month about Ted Lasso returning, immersing myself in known quantities like my favorite shows is one way of practicing self-care as I try to stay afloat amid my oftentimes dark battle with maintaining my highly precarious mental health of late.
Deadline posted a clip to X with Scott’s comments on Season 3. I’ve embedded it here.
See Clarus the dogcow Walk
Okay, this post admittedly has nothing whatsoever to do with accessibility.
My friend Stephen Hackett writes today at 512 Pixels Apple’s Clarus the Dogcow now has four legs and can walk, thanks to today’s update of the Developer app ahead of this year’s WWDC in a few weeks. The update, which gives the cross-platform app a Liquid Glass glow-up, also brings with it several WWDC-themed stickers for people to use in iMessage. One of them features the aforementioned Clarus—just look at it!
One perk of running your own website is covering a thing out of sheer adorableness.
Relatedly, don’t miss Hackett’s video on the history of Clarus (embedded below).