Brief followup on microsoft’s Magnetic USB-C Port

Since posting my brief piece yesterday on Microsoft’s new magnetic USB-C connector on its impending Surface Laptop Ultra, I’ve gotten some feedback from readers, via email and on social media, who question my argument and the newness of the invention. The thrust of their counterpoint says there exists a whole cottage industry on Amazon of inexpensive magnetic adapters one can use with the existing“regular” USB-C ports on their computer(s).

My retort? An aftermarket dongle pales in comparison to, say, Microsoft’s solution that’s permanently attached to the laptop and is reversible to boot. I’ll concede the concept rings true, but these two products are not at all the same thing. From an accessibility perspective, the dongles reintroduce the problem Microsoft’s connector inherently solves: namely, the hand-eye rigamarole that can make plugging in cables difficult for people with certain disabilities. A user still needs to connect everything when setting up the adapter, and making it even more finicky and inaccessible in terms of cognition, the person must ensure the pieces fit correctly—and they’re small! Taken together, the user experience is worlds different than, again, having the magnetic port permanently affixed to the computer itself.

So, no, these cheap adapters from companies I’ve never heard of are hardly in the same league as what Microsoft’s engineered. If Microsoft is the NFL, these adapters are Pop Warner. Perhaps both are spiritually similar, but in everyday use, I’d bet a whole lot of money—and I’m not even a betting man—these adapters are worse in every conceivable way.

I’m sure these have a place in someone’s toolkit, but they are not anything remotely close to Microsoft’s solution.

Microsoft Introduces ‘world’s first’ Magnetic USB-C Port

Microsoft held an event in San Francisco this week at which it announced several AI-centric enhancements to Windows, as well as new first-party hardware like the Surface Laptop Ultra. The computer comes out on October 16.

Most interesting to me about Microsoft’s announcement is what it describes as “the world’s first built-in magnetic USB-C charging port.” It’s Microsoft, not Apple, that have engineered the USB-C port of my dreams, effectively fusing MagSafe with USB-C. My friend Rich DeMuro posted a quick clip of it to X, and the implementation is pretty much identical to MagSafe on a MacBook Pro. According to Microsoft, the new connector “combines magnetic convenience with the versatility of a standard connection.” It is convenient, but it’s also very much something else: accessibility!

Indeed, the accessibility gains here are non-trivial. If you’re a Windows user who, like me, has visual and fine-motor conditions which make plugging in cables an adventure in tedium for your hand-eye coordination, Microsoft’s new connector may well be a godsend when using your machine. Simply bring the cable close to the port itself and physics does the rest. Is a charging port alone worth spending $2,600 to have? No, but that’s beside the point. The salient point is that it’s disingenuous, dare I say lazy, to brush off this feature as a “copy” of MagSafe or an ostensibly insignificant implementation detail. On the contrary, it’s these little things on the margins that oftentimes make or break a positive user experience for people with disabilities. It’s a shining example of why hardware accessibility matters just as much as software. My days as a Windows user are long past, but Microsoft deserves the utmost credit for including this new connector even if it’s conceptually old. It’s a genuinely good feature addition, regardless of provenance—or platform.

Microsoft has posted a brief video on the Surface Laptop Ultra to YouTube.

Report: Apple, LG Collaborating on new smart home devices

Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg this week Apple is working with LG to co-develop a range of smart home devices.

“The products will be part of an ecosystem of devices that work with Apple’s new smart home hub, as well as an upgraded HomePod mini and fresh TV set-top box, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The new Apple devices are set to be introduced on Oct. 13,” Gurman wrote on Tuesday. “The products developed with South Korea’s LG will also include a smart deadbolt lock, indoor security camera, outdoor security camera and floodlight camera, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the undertaking is private.”

Gurman adds the arrangement “gives Apple a way to quickly expand its ecosystem without shouldering the full cost and complexity of producing and supporting a wide range of accessories” while allowing the company to “help shape the products’ design, tailor their features and oversee engineering while keeping the work largely under wraps.”

I’m of two minds about this news. On one side, it’s good to see Apple push further into the smart home, and it makes sense strategically to get together with a third-party to shoulder some of the developmental load. I’m curious to know the industrial design of these products, and software-wise, what accessibility features are deemed important for, say, the smart lock. As to LG, I’m a fan of their products in general. I have a 77” C3 OLED television in my living room, of course, but I also just put in a new suite of LG appliances in my kitchen. The dishwasher in particular has been terrific thus far because not only is the top control panel clear and crisp to read, the tub lighting and floor light are de-facto accessibility features for me. I chose this model primarily for these ostensible luxuries, as I consider the tub illumination to be task lighting, while the floor light pulses while the dishwasher is running and goes solid when finished. The door also pops open automatically to activate the steam-drying function. Taken together, these features add up to a more accessible—and yes, enjoyable—user experience for someone with visual disabilities. (See also: the light-up knobs on my new range, which make knowing when the stove is on more accessible when I’m using it.)

On the other side, none of these things, including the long-rumored home hub, feel particularly pertinent to my life now. My new building has tight security, replete with a 24/7 concierge desk, and (unverified) visitors must be let into the elevator to reach the residences. Ergo, the security cameras are superfluous. Likewise with the door lock, if only because swapping the existing, standardized hardware necessitates an architectural review by the homeowners’ association for approval and it’s a pain in the ass. At the very least, I’d personally prefer to engage with the building’s bureaucracy as little as possible. Regarding the smart display, it makes sense for Apple to stream video feeds from the aforementioned cameras—but again, they have no practical use here. And as someone who’s still acclimating to living alone for the first time in my life, I wonder what I could use the smart display for if not for monitoring video feeds or a doorbell. My old house in San Francisco? Sure! In a Portland high-rise, however, I’m dubious of its actual utility to me. Nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to see what accessibility features are part of this new “homeOS” platform of Apple’s.

ESPN Announces 4K HDR Support In the united states

ESPN put out a press release early last month in which it announced ESPN and ESPN2 would begin rolling out in 4K HDR in the United States. The network said the move would “[elevate] picture quality for fans during one of the highest stakes stretches of the year for live sports,” adding “it will deliver clearer edges, sharper colors and smoother movement—all critically important for delivering a richer and more immersive viewing experience for sports fans.”

“The ESPN App on iOS and tvOS will be the first to support the new experiences, with additional connected TV platforms to follow, as well as on Disney+ in the U.S. to ESPN Unlimited subscribers,” the network said in its announcement on September 8. “We will also have the ability to deliver the networks in 4K HDR through traditional and digital pay-TV providers (MVPDs and DMVPDs). As the rollout expands, fans will start seeing 4K HDR badging on living room devices and HDR badging on mobile.”

Notably, ESPN will be televising its first Super Bowl this season. Super Bowl LXI is set for February 14 in Los Angeles.

This news caught my eye because the ESPN app lives on the Top Shelf of my Apple TV Home Screen. As a devout sports fan, I use the app a lot to watch things like the NHL and college football; it’s one of the very best apps on the platform in my opinion. My favorite part of the app is it uses the stock tvOS video player, but adds custom buttons for multi-view, alternate broadcasts, and more. This means ESPN supports my custom captioning setup set in SF Mono and in large type. Even better from an accessibility standpoint, the crispness of 4K HDR is a godsend for my low vision; it’s one reason why I prefer Apple TV as my streaming box because the main user interface is rendered in clean, crisp 4K HDR—colors pop and text is sharp, making icons, et al, easy to read. (See also: why I prefer Vivid picture mode on my LG C3.)

Amazon Announces ‘Completely Redesigned’ Kindle Lineup

In a post published last week, Amazon announced what it described as a “completely redesigned” family of e-readers.

The post was written by Kevin Keith, Amazon’s vice president of devices.

“The team redesigned the new family of devices from the ground up, beginning with a newly designed reverse stack display construction—a first for the e-reader category,” Keith wrote in the announcement on Thursday. “Every device now features a flush-front display—no raised border interrupting the reading surface. Just a seamless edge-to-edge display for an uninterrupted page and thinner, more portable device. The physical color of each device now wraps seamlessly from front to back. That means the color you choose is visible whether the Kindle is on a café table, a nightstand, or tucked in a tote bag. The lineup introduces stylish new colors: Ube (a rich purple), Alpine Sky, Seaglass Green, and Graphite, and brings Fig to e-readers for the first time.”

Of the models, the Paperwhite is most interesting to me. Amazon says the new version, which comes with 16GB storage and costs $199, is thinner and lighter than the model it replaces and features an astounding 12 weeks of battery life. On the display technology, the company notes it uses “an oxide-thin film transistor backplane and is the largest Kindle Paperwhite display with the highest contrast ratio—delivering deep blacks and crisp text, and images that pop off the screen, whether you’re reading in bright sunlight or under the covers at night.”

The Paperwhite Signature Edition, with 32GB storage, is priced at $249.

My last experience with a Paperwhite was using the 2018 10th generation. I liked it a lot, and the battery life was tremendous, but eventually switched back to Apple Books on iPadOS because of the sharper and more colorful—albeit wholly different technology—display. In fact, reading books is one reason I’m so very excited for the new OLED-equipped iPad mini that’s purportedly launching next week. As someone who primarily uses my 13” M4 iPad Pro for reading, it should be a real treat to have an OLED screen in a form factor I truly adore. In my experience, the iPad Pro, meanwhile, is just too unwieldy for me to hold during relaxed, prolonged reading sessions sitting on the sofa.

Kudos to Amazon for giving accessibility a shoutout on its new Kindle page.

Brief words on a new apple TV box and apple’s October

John Gruber at Daring Fireball wrote this week about Apple’s reportedly extremely busy October. Of everything the company is expected to announce, Gruber’s quip on the Apple TV 4K, untouched since 2022, caught my eye the most.

“I really want to see Apple double-down in this space [and] reinvigorate it,” he said on Tuesday. “I think watching TV on Apple TV hardware is by far the best experience out there. Yet its market share is very low. Apple TV is to the living room today what the Mac was to desktop computing in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Everyone sees it as too expensive and they have no idea why they’d actually be happier if they had one.”

I wholeheartedly agree with my friend here. I love my Apple TV and believe it’s the best, most accessible set-top box on the market, and I’ve tried some of the competition over the years. Without rehashing my talking points from articles past, suffice it to say I remain steadfast in my belief that tvOS has the user interface backwards; all the information found in the TV app should be part of the main screen, not siloed within a discrete app. In this way, the tvOS Home Screen could be more akin to Google TV with personalized recommendations, etc, but nicer with the usual tvOS polish.

As of this writing, Apple is purportedly planning to launch a new Apple TV 4K, along with a new HomePod mini and a long-rumored smart display, on October 13. My new building is scheduled to undergo some needed electrical upgrades that week, so I’ll be keeping abreast of all these Apple announcements from a hotel room here in downtown Portland.

Google Enables HiLight Feature In Latest Android 17 Beta

Abner Li reports today for 9to5 Google Google has activated its HiLight feature in Tuesday’s release of Android 17 QPR2 Beta 6.1. The tentpole feature, available on Pixel 11 Pro, glows colored light when delivering a message notification.

“When you go to a Google Contacts page, the HiLight bottom sheet shows options for Phone calls and Messages that you can individually enable [or] disable,” Li wrote. “We’re seeing this work with Google Messages today, while there should also be support for WhatsApp since calls already work. When you receive a message, HiLight blinks twice.”

I’ve been meaning to write about HiLights since my close friend and peer Joanna Stern wrote about it on New Things, so seeing Li’s story is a good excuse to finally do so. At a high level, HiLight strikes me as essentially the same, on principle anyway, as Apple’s longstanding LED flash alerts feature for iPhones. Whereas Apple explicitly considers its flash alerts an accessibility feature “for anyone who might miss audible alerts” while Google is pitching HiLights towards the mainstream, it takes neither an accessibility aesthete nor an astrophysicist to surmise the accessibility gains of both. In fact, it could be cogently argued Google’s implementation may be better for certain people because it uses color; Apple, by contrast, only leverages the camera’s built-in flash—available in every color under the rainbow called white. Overall, both Google and Apple’s respective features may as well be twins, conceptually speaking.

As a CODA, both these features remind me of the accessible doorbell my Deaf parents had installed in our apartment growing up. I’ve written about it in the past, but whenever someone would press the doorbell outside, a quick burst of light would emanate inside from the top corner. There was no sound to accompany the visual. Whenever the burst of light appeared, my parents knew someone was at the door and usually yelled at me—yes, deaf people have voices—to go answer it. In retrospect, I wish it did have an audible chime for times when I wasn’t in the living room to see the flash.

Virginia Tech, Zoox Release Results of ‘One-of-a-Kind’ Study

Earlier this month, on September 9, Gwen Sheldon penned a piece for Virginia Tech about new research between the university and Amazon-owned and Bay Area-based autonomous vehicle company Zoox that found “custom audio tones could effectively communicate with people attempting to cross streets.”

“A novel study from Virginia Tech and Zoox, the Amazon-owned autonomous ride-hailing company, provides a promising answer: through sound. The research was published at the 28th Enhanced Safety of Vehicles Conference, which was sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Transport Canada,” Sheldon reported. “Using custom tones, the research team explored how sound could be used to communicate vehicle intent in participant trials. Results show that sounds can be as effective as a traditional horn in increasing pedestrian awareness and influencing crossing decisions, particularly in jaywalking situations, even without prior training on the tones.”

The whitepaper with the research is available to read,

I connected with Dr. Charlie Klauer, a research scientist at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute Division of Vehicle, Driver, & System Safety. In a brief interview conducted over email earlier this month, Dr. Klauer, who has spent a quarter-century studying what he called “human factors transportation research primarily utilizing naturalistic driving studies to understand driver behavior,” explained one of the Institute’s, known as VTTI, goals is “designing research studies to test automotive systems.” Zoox, she told me, approached the school and asked to look into how sound helps communicate vehicle intent to pedestrians and thus influence their decision-making when crossing the street.

“Automated vehicles are currently operating in the real world, albeit in limited areas. As we look to a future where more vehicles may be operating without a driver, we should understand how pedestrian interactions are happening, how pedestrians are making decisions and what information they need to make safe decisions,” Dr. Klauer said. “I believe understanding this information can help us influence new ways for automated vehicles to communicate with pedestrians and inform what education road users need about sharing the road with autonomous vehicles.”

According to Dr. Klauer, the problem prompting the study was exploring the ways in which pedestrians “understand what to expect when sharing the road with a vehicle that doesn’t have a driver.” Pedestrians oftentimes rely on cues from drivers when crossing, particularly at intersections where they may not be a crosswalk or stoplight. When cars approach, he said, people are more likely to look towards the driver to confirm intent before beginning to cross safely.

With an autonomous vehicle, however, there is no human driver to convey said intent to pedestrians.

“We are studying this so that automated vehicles not only improve safety for riders and drivers, but they also are going to improve safety for our pedestrians as well,” Dr. Klauer said.

When asked about the primary goal of the project, Dr. Klauer said it was “to improve safety for all vulnerable road users, specifically ensuring that automated vehicles can effectively communicate with everyone,” adding it “explored how pedestrians would react to sounds without having any prior knowledge of what the sounds were supposed to mean.”

She added: “We also wanted to evaluate the participants’ perceptions of the sounds. Traditional car horns are effective and universally known but are often perceived as obnoxious and aggressive. Participants were surveyed to rank the sounds by qualities like ‘urgency,’ ‘friendliness,’ and ‘aggression.’ Another goal was to explore how audio tones can communicate with people who have low vision or who have some vision impairment. Half of our 40 participants included people who had low or visually impaired vision. One of the potential benefits of automated vehicles is to improve transportation options for everyone, including those who may not be able to drive. We wanted to make sure autonomous vehicles can effectively communicate with people who have varied physical and emotional capabilities.”

As to the mechanics of the study, Dr. Klauer explained VTTI designed an environment on its closed-course test track wherein science could accurately tally pedestrians’ responses. The pedestrians weren’t in a simulation, though: they faced real-world roadway environments where ambient traffic sounds would be naturally present. It’s this aspect that made the research unique, according to Dr. Klauer, because most studies examining so-called external human machine interfaces have been done under simulated conditions or in augmented reality settings. For its part, Zoox developed seven bespoke tones, each signifying intent such as “vehicle is moving” or “vehicle is waiting.” The noises were tested against situations where a pedestrian may need to wait for a vehicle, like when jaywalking, or when a vehicle was stopped in the road, waiting, such as when at a crosswalk.

“In mid-block ‘jaywalking’ scenarios, the purpose-built alert tones were highly successful. The research showed that these novel sounds were just as effective as a traditional car horn at influencing a pedestrian’s decision not to cross, and participants perceived the sounds much more favorably and as less aggressive,” Dr. Klauer said of the research’s findings. “In structured crosswalk scenarios, where the vehicle played ‘waiting’ tones to encourage safe passage, the sounds influenced decisions less than 50% of the time. This suggests that pedestrians rely heavily on the physical motion of the car in marked crosswalks, and that it will require repeated exposure over time for the public to learn and trust these new ‘waiting’ audio signals.”

When asked about feedback on the research, Dr. Klauer said she believes it was special due its realism and emphasized his belief “the results are much more generalizable than other studies that have been done in this space.” He went on to tell me she thinks the study is a “launching point” for future research on the topic, describing the participants as “naive” to the sounds they were exposed to during the study. “It will be important to continue this line of research to understand how pedestrians learn to interpret these sounds with repeated exposure over time to ensure the safety benefits for pedestrians but also all road users,” Dr. Klauer said.

Looking towards the future, Dr. Klauer noted pedestrian fatalities have been on the rise over the past decade. As the transportation apparatus (slowly) transitions to autonomous vehicles, she said, it’s “critical” they be designed in a way that “[prioritizes] pedestrian safety” so as to make them safe for all. “That is what we are ultimately working toward, a future where we greatly reduce and eventually eliminate fatalities on United States roadways,” Dr. Klauer said.

How Noah Elliott and ottobock Are Pushing the limits of prosthetics

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to sit down virtually with yet one more Paralympic athlete in Noah Elliott. A snowboarder with a limb difference, he won a gold medal for the United States team at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. A veteran of three Paralympic Games, Elliott has garnered four medals: two gold, one silver, and one bronze. He had his leg amputated above the knee at 15 after being diagnosed with osteosarcoma.

Elliott works closely with Texas-based medical technology company Ottobock as a brand evangelist of sorts. On its website, the company, founded in 1919 in Germany, describes itself as “specializing in prosthetics, orthotics, and mobility solutions,” adding their North Star is “improving quality of life through technological innovation, advanced biomechanics, and advancements in neuromobility.”

“I couldn’t be more proud to be affiliated with them,” Elliott said of his work with Ottobock.

Jan-Philip Rahmann, Ottobock North America’s executive director of marketing and digital sales, explained to me in an interview concurrent to Elliott’s that the company has undergone a “massive transformation” from a B2B company, or business-to-business, to working directly with customers like Elliott who have limb differences. The overarching goal is to help amputees like Elliott lead “healthy and active lives” as well as be there for users and reassure them Ottobock is there to provide unwavering support in their endeavors. Ottobock, Rahmann said, wants to be a “direct line of feedback” for people like Elliott to lean on, as evidenced by its 470 clinics operating worldwide. Rahmann characterized Ottobock’s transformation as big and exciting, also telling me he’s personally “very honored” to be part of it.

In late July, Ottobock announced the release of the #DearAI Community Library. The library, available on Hugging Face, was touted in the press release as “one of the first-of-its-kind open-source datasets of images depicting people with limb loss in everyday life created, selected, and annotated by the community itself, powered by Microsoft.” Ottobock went on to say the imagery “represents a significant step forward in addressing one of AI’s most persistent blind spots: the near-total absence of people with disabilities, and people with limb loss and limb difference in particular, from AI-generated imagery. AI systems will now have accurate representation of how amputees or people with limb differences live their lives.” It matters because disability representation in AI is lacking in many ways, notably in authenticity.

“AI can only imagine what it has already seen—and it has never truly seen the real lives of people with limb loss or limb differences. With the #DearAI Community Library, we are changing that," Martin Böhm, Ottobock’s chief experience officer, said in a statement included with the company’s announcement on July 22. “This initiative is about contribution: giving AI something real to learn from, built by the people whose lives it has never accurately reflected. The community shaped every decision, and that is what makes this library different.”

Technologically speaking, Ottobock currently runs two major research and development labs: one in Europe and one in Salt Lake City that focus on “various upper limb and lower limb prosthetics technology,” according to Rahmann. One of the big “paradigm shifts,” he added, is what’s called a microprocessor knee and is the type of prosthetic Elliott himself wears on a daily basis. Armed with feedback from wearers like Elliott who are “pushing the limits of our devices,” Rahmann said it’s Ottobock’s mission to take that data and “gather and learn for that” and innovate further.

“Ottobock has created top-of-the-line processes as a consumer and, as a user of these devices, everything they’re doing is really top of the line,” Elliott said. “I think it’s super impactful. It’s revolutionizing the way our prosthetics are developing over the near future, and what they’ve already come to do. It’s really incredible.”

When asked how Ottobock’s technology impacts his athletics and everyday life, Elliott said the first and foremost thing his prosthetic does is “give me my humanity back.” It gives him a literal piece of himself back, which he feels is surreal because he never thought it was possible. It makes Elliott feel “more humane” that he can do things like any parent, such as take his daughter to play at the park. The prosthetic makes him feel like he’s not being judged by non-disabled folks, also telling me Ottobock’s devices “actually gives people resilience and power… it gives them opportunity to do whatever they want to do and chase their dreams in their life… as a user, I can’t emphasize that enough.”

For his part, Rahmann concurred.

“People who have limb differences, their whole body begins to compensate and [it] throws everything out of whack. It leads to hip misalignment, which can lead to back pain, which can lead to shoulder pain. It’s this chain reaction of how the body is connected and interconnected,” he said. “Giving someone that kind of stability to be able to use both lower limbs equally gives them back the major control of their upper body as well. That’s what I’m seeing in terms of innovation—the big change that we [at Ottobock] will probably see in microprocessor needs is just going to be the more features coming onto it: water resistance, we have a knee that is completely water and corrosion resistant [to] go swimming in saltwater, for instance. Anything that will push an end user, which is where we get our feedback from, to live more fulfilled lives and to push the limits of where they want to take their devices.”

In a nutshell, Elliott called wearing Ottobock’s device “empowering and freeing.”

He expounded: “I think it’s important to also say every century has its revolution, and we’re living in the day and age where the revolution in 2026 is the future of inclusivity. We’re seeing the growth of people with disabilities, not only being able to move throughout their daily lives, but also we’re seeing adaptive sports taking a new plane and almost beating sometimes. You can beat able-bodied athletes at times with some of the technology we’re seeing, and just showcasing the ability level of people in adaptive sports, the future of it, and that’s why this AI campaign is so powerful. The generations before me never had that chance, or that person to look to, or that device that was going to unlock the rest of their lives and freedom for them. We’re seeing that happen before our very eyes in this day and age, and I think this Dear AI campaign is such a big critical piece of moving forward and helping to inspire the kid who right now is 8 years old… he might get a cancer diagnosis when he’s 16, or the 30-year-old woman who gets into a car accident. Disability can happen at any point to anyone… [this technology] goes such a long way so that when it happens—because it’s not about if, it’s about when—every person throughout their life is either going to know somebody personally or their family or friend has a disability or disease or something. Sometimes they end up being that person [who becomes disabled] and being able to help change the future, and that’s why this campaign is so powerful.”

Feedback on Ottobock’s work, Rahmann told me, is always replete with “resounding gratefulness” from customers which “underlines” the company’s 100-year-old purpose of empowering and enriching the lives of amputees everywhere. Every email is read. Every letter is passed on within the company. And ambassadors like Elliott, Rahmann said, are integral parts of how Ottobock keeps its ear to the proverbial ground and improves its products. There even are Ottobock employees who give real-world feedback internally on the development work going on.

“The biggest thing I can say is, honestly, the writing is on the wall when you look at this [technology],” Elliott said. There’ve been so many technological advances with the products that have come out… we’ve seen the change in the [limb different] community between the microprocessor knee, which, crazy enough, came out the year I was born in 1997 and now we’ve seen it change so much since then. Before that, everything was so mechanical and way different than what we have today, and because of that, we’re seeing people able to do things that we’ve never seen a person with a disability be able to perform. It’s giving access to people. A great example is a mom who has one foot and hasn’t ever been able to go to school and pick up her daughter without being questioned by the kids, or pointed at walking through the grocery store. [The tech] gives gait back to walk in there confidently [and] happily and ask their child about their day at school, or going to the grocery store and coming home feeling confident. I can’t say it enough—the writing’s on the wall: we’re seeing the change [spurred by the protheses] and the mobility and life it gives to people.”

Looking towards the future of orthotics and prosthetics, Elliott said he really wants “a jetpack or something.” In all seriousness, though, he emphasized he’s wholly invested in his evangelism of Ottobock and prosthetics in general, and ardently believes everyone who needs it and wants it should have access to this technology. Rahmann said the company has a government affairs team whose job involves lobbying bodies like Congress about this type of technology; Ottobock, he said, strives to move their tech towards “as broad of a population as possible.”

“There is always a forgotten group that desperately need these devices so that they can return to living a normal life [and] return to work [and] be part of society, to contribute to society.” Rahmann said of the future. “We would give access to these devices to as many people as possible. That is the future of what I would love to see—that requires lobbying, government initiatives, and spreading awareness of the community we serve… making sure that they are seen and removing that stigma and making people realize these are normal human beings who deserve to contribute to society, just like able-bodied people do.”

Beats Releases Beats 360 Headphones

Apple-owned Beats recently released new over-ear headphones: the $349 Beats 360.

The headphones look more or less like an analogue to AirPods Max, at least with the curved canopy part. The Beats 360 features interchangeable ear cuffs so wearers can create their own personalized look; AirPods Max have this too, but seemingly only for the Lightning version. I’ve collected a few Beats products over the years since Apple acquired them in 2014—the Solo 3s, the Studio Pro, and the Studio Buds+—so I pay attention whenever Beats releases anything new.

From an accessibility perspective, I’m curious as to how accessible it is to swap out the Beats 360’s ear cushions. I still have my old Lightning-equipped AirPods Max, and one of the great details about them is how the ear cushions attach magnetically. Likewise, the AirPods’ pairing process is one-tap and Apple cleverly uses iCloud on the backend to propagate pairing to a person’s other devices. The product page for the Beats 360 says Fast Pair is supported on Android, which I’ve said before is great for accessibility for all the same reasons AirPods’ pairing is so damn magical and accessible. Kudos to Beats—and by extension, Apple—for identifying the benefits of supporting Google’s like technology for setup. It makes the Beats 360 user experience that much nicer for Android users. And of course, it’s been my experience Beats’ headphones feel appreciably lighter on my head than AirPods Max. If you’re someone who’s sensitive to sensory input, Beats 360 may well be the better choice than AirPods Max on weight alone.

The Beats 360 are available in Apple Stores now.

‘The apple cards origin story’

My old pal (and my old Macworld editor way back when) Lex Friedman published a blog post this week in which he recounts the Apple Cards app. The cards, printed in 100% cotton paper, purportedly were the brainchild of Steve Jobs.

“In 2011, Apple released the Cards app. The app—which required iOS 5—let you design custom letterpress cards, with your messages and photos printed upon them—which Apple would ship to your recipient on your behalf,” Friedman wrote. “The Cards app icon: a cream note card and envelope with a fountain pen on a maroon background. I recently learned the origin story of Cards, and that it was specifically a Steve Jobs product. It also wasn’t smooth sailing. But first, some backstory, and inserting myself into the narrative, because it’s my site and I can do what I want here.”

The post is well worth a read in its entirety. The reason I write about Friedman’s blog post is because I have a fond recollection of Cards. Even 15 years ago, which predates my time in tech journalism, I vividly remember thinking how accessible Cards was on principle. To Jobs’ point, that I could create a card right on my iPhone and then have Apple mail it for me could plausibly be eminently more accessible than handwriting the card, then the envelope, then find a stamp, and then walk it to a mailbox or post office. From an accessibility standpoint, each of those tasks can be relatively inaccessible in isolation; compounded, however, they can turn ostensibly menial tasks into a Mt. Everest expedition of sorts. For someone with a disability, or multitudes, these factors may prove not at all trivial in practice.

The moral of Friedman’s story? Cards was in fact a de-facto accessibility feature disguised as a cool service.

On Using the stock UI Elements on the mac

Brent Simmons published a piece to his Inessential blog earlier this week in which he extols the virtues of the default user interface elements on macOS. He posits using as much of the stock UI controls is one of the very best things a developer can do for honoring “proper” Mac app design, at least to Mac diehards such as himself and John Gruber.

“[The] stock Mac UI is designed by Apple, the best designers in the world, and do you really think you can do better? Really?” Simmons wrote on Tuesday. “The app world is full of people who think they’re better and they’re really, really, really not. Well, I still think Apple has the best collection of UI designers in the world, but, for whatever reasons, the guidance from above on how the Mac UI should look is missing the mark. I’m not blaming the people doing the work—they’re doing great work with the direction they’re given.”

As I quipped on Mastodon today, another reason to prefer the stock UI controls is accessibility! As I wrote, VoiceOver, for instance, gives developers proper labels “for free” when using stock UI elements. Likewise, features such as Dynamic Type are built to, in Tim Cook’s parlance, work seamlessly together with stock controls. Of course app makers must do some legwork to fully support accessibility; the salient point is only that Apple’s programmers and designers have done lots of the necessary legwork from Apple Park. These aren’t trivial gains—for developers or their users.

And yes, this use-the-damn-defaults argument applies equally as well to the stock video player on tvOS.

See also: Gruber on macOS Golden Gate and Apple “eschewing clarity.”

Lenovo’s Charlotte West: tech can be ‘Powerful’ for sports Fans

Back in late May, ahead of this summer’s World Cup, Lenovo posted a piece to its StoryHub website wherein the company announced its support for the Football for All Leadership Program. Founded in 2018, Football for All is described by overseer Integrated Dreams as “the first international [program] specifically designed to promote employability, entrepreneurship and networking of disabled people in the sports world.”

“Today, Lenovo is supporting the advancement of the Integrated Dreams mission through the Football for All Leadership Programme, the first international programme specifically designed to promote employability, entrepreneurship and networking of people with disabilities in the sports world,” Lenovo wrote on May 26. “By funding the development of the Football for All technology programme, Lenovo is empowering people with disabilities to create a lasting positive impact for the community. But as accessibility experts know—you can’t just develop an app, share it with a community of users with disabilities, and assume it will work. That’s why Lenovo’s Head of Corporate Citizenship, Santiago Mendez, traveled to Morocco to complete user testing as part of the 2026 Football For All Leadership Program (FFALP), made possible by a grant from FIFA Foundation and the World Football Remission Fund.”

Earlier this month, I sat down via videoconference with Charlotte West, Lenovo’s vice president of global corporate communications and board director of the Lenovo Foundation. The Foundation is the company’s philanthropic arm, responsible for forging relationships with groups like Integrated Dreams and the Football For All Leadership Program. West described her roles as different but complementary halves, saying the work dovetails into Lenovo’s commitment to accessibility and furthering inclusion. “It’s all nicely aligned and complementary, I would say,” she said.

When asked how the FFALP connects to the World Cup itself, West explained Lenovo’s goal was not to approach FIFA with the idea of “[having] our logos around the side” of the pitch during the tournament’s matches. Rather, West told me Lenovo approached the opportunity with the mindset it could be a technological partnership; the company wanted to work with FIFA to “improve the fan experience,” she said, as well as for players, coaches, and other personnel. The overarching goal was to “make the World Cup accessible,” an adjective West told me she chose deliberately because it speaks well towards the ethos around democratizing the game for fans everywhere. “A lot of the technology was about doing things that allowed people to feel like they’re on the pitch and part of the match itself,” West said.

Accessibility, and inclusion, then became a double entendre for Lenovo and FIFA. It was not only about making soccer more accessible to people with disabilities, it made the sport more accessible for everyone to grok. The technologies, such as the ChatGPT-like FIFA AI Pro—which enabled fans to gain knowledge about the players from smaller countries like the African nation of Cape Verde—were deployed in a concerted effort to “[level] the playing field in terms of the kind of insights people could get access to about teams, data, performance, [and] past matches,” according to West.

For Integrated Dreams, Lenovo targeted them for a partnership “about nine months” prior to the World Cup kicking off. Lenovo, West said to me, prioritized “finding the right partners” who could help bolster not only inclusivity and philanthropy but sport as well. Lenovo hoped to find organizations who could help “do something meaningful that had longevity beyond the tournament.”

Working with FIFA is one thing, surely a big thing—but Integrated Dreams was something else.

“We’re always looking at what can be done well beyond that moment in time,” West said. “Whilst the World Cup was a moment in time this summer, we wanted to make sure it stood up for longer than that, and look at it as a long-term partnership and initiative.”

West emphasized Lenovo “didn’t start” at the outset thinking there would exist this Lenovo-FIFA-Integrated Dreams triumvirate. Indeed, the Football For All is its own entity. Nonetheless, she noted Lenovo did keep soccer’s governing body “up to date” on how things were going as they progressed with Integrated Dreams.

West said she’s gotten comments from people—who may not know the intricacies of her job—say they’re appreciative of the innovations wrought by Lenovo for the World Cup. The layering of technology onto sports makes the games more fun and engaging, and yes, more accessible to everyone. “I think anything that improves the [viewing] experience and the capabilities for us as fans is welcome,” West said. “Sometimes there is too much tech in sport, right? There’s some stuff that has been criticized in football, and other sports, where we’re giving too much over to technology. But when it comes down to improving the experience or improving access, that’s where technology can be really powerful.”

She continued: “I think this idea of focusing on improving the access and improving the experience is what people want, and we know generally from a trend perspective is people want want to be part of live experiences. If they can’t be in the physical environment, in terms of actually being in a stadium, to be able to bring a different experience if they’re viewing on their phone or at home is is only going to grow the interest and engagement in that sport. From a follow-on perspective since the World Cup, we’ve seen a lot of other sports reaching out to us as a company. Like, ‘Okay, that’s really interesting. What can you do for us?’”

Lenovo is the official technology partner for Formula 1 racing, and is looking forward to bringing technology to next year’s Women’s World Cup tournament in Brazil. Each sport, she said, has “a different vibe,” and with tech’s immutable path of progression, Lenovo is laser-focused on keeping up with trends and building the best, most accessible experiences for fans. Rest assured “the technology story doesn’t stop with the men’s World Cup,” West said.

“I’m excited for the Women’s World Cup because I think we can do different work there,” West said of Lenovo’s future work. “The men have been playing football forever. It’s the biggest sport in the world. The women’s sport is going massively, and there are some real rockstar female players in different corners of the world. I think there’s a real appetite to see women excelling at the highest level in sports like football, so I think there’s a different fact [around the women’s game]. It’s got a different energy and vibe around it versus the men’s. I think that means we can experiment more. We can do some more interesting things beyond just talking about the tech. We can talk more broadly. We can look at the partnerships that we have around the world with female-led philanthropy partners, for example, and explore opportunities there. It’s the same platform, but different because we can take it in a different direction.”

Lenovo’s efforts conjure memories of Apple’s own work in merging sports and technology. The latter has done invested heavily in Apple Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro, first with the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and most recently a Yankees-Red Sox game from Fenway Park. Officially, Apple is marketing these ventures as ways to experience spatial computing and prop up the headset. From an accessibility perspective, however, these projects have tantalizing potential that I’ve written about before. Not everyone can afford a $3500 facial computer, but the salient point stands: the technology is capable of delivering engaging, more accessible experiences for sports fans who, on another financial note, may be unable to budget for the logistical considerations required for live sporting events. And that doesn’t even account for the accessibility of the venues themselves, as I’ve also covered in the not-so-distant past.

The takeaway here is Lenovo is far from alone in its quest to fuse technology with sports—as it should be.

AT&T Isn’t supporting New iPhone Handoff Feature

My friend Jeff Carlson reports today for CNET not every cellular carrier supports Apple’s iPhone Handoff feature, new to iOS 27. The functionality “lets you use one phone number between two devices so you can switch between them whenever you want [and] makes it easy to move back and forth between devices optimized for the moment,” Apple says. Carlson notes “your texts, calls, voicemails and Find My location automatically follow you to the phone in use.”

“At launch, however, the feature is supported only by T-Mobile in the US, and the carrier is charging $5 a month to use it,” Carlson wrote on Wednesday. “And while Verizon support is expected by the end of the year, AT&T appears to be sitting this feature out for now.”

As a longtime AT&T customer, dating back to the Cingular days, Carlson’s story is a buzzkill. I’m privileged to be a regular iPhone reviewer—in fact, I’m in early testing of an iPhone 18 Pro Max (in burgundy) sent to me by Apple—and, as such, it’s historically been a bit of a pain in the ass to juggle two active phones. To really use my new 18 Pro Max, I had to dissociate my phone number from my year-old iPhone Air. If I want to switch back, then I have to manually re-pair my number—which makes my review unit worthless for calls. From an accessibility standpoint, then, iPhone Handoff serves as a de-facto assistive technology to the extent it prevents the rigamarole, which imposes cognitive load. To Carlson’s point, I theoretically could switch between my two phones with nary a care in the world. The problem is, as an AT&T customer, the company isn’t supporting iPhone Handoff, so dance I must. It’s definitely a first-world problem to have, but that doesn’t discount the meaningful accessibility gains iPhone Handoff can provide someone in my shoes.

T-Mobile is charging $5 per month for iPhone Handoff, while Verizon is promising support by year’s end.

iOS 27.2 Beta 1 Includes ASL Features for FaceTime, Apple TV

Juli Clover reported last week for MacRumors about the new features in iOS 27.2 Beta 1. Among them, which include the redesigned Health app, more Siri AI languages, and more, is the presence of an API for adding ASL to FaceTime calls.

“Back in May, Apple said it would add a new API to FaceTime allowing developers who make sign language interpretation apps to add a human interpreter to an ongoing video call,” Clover wrote on September 16. Clover refers to the company’s announcement on Global Accessibility Awareness Day it would give the videoconferencing feature “a new API allowing sign language interpretation app developers to add a human interpreter to an ongoing video call.”

In other beta news, tech YouTuber Aaron Zollo shared on X over the weekend news of his discovery that iOS 27.2 Beta 1 has a new Sign Language option in the Apple TV app’s settings. In his screenshot, Apple writes in the feature’s description users can watch movies and television shows with sign language interpretation “when available.”

Following Up on tvOS and Text Size

Aside from new iPhones and Apple Watches and AirPods, last week saw Apple release the version 27 class of operating systems which power those devices. One of those updates was tvOS 27 for Apple TV 4K. On the whole, the new software is unexciting—except for accessibility, fortuitously enough for yours truly. Back in late May, I wrote about tvOS 27’s support for larger text sizes. The features come after tvOS 26.4 brought with it support for customizable captions and subtitles in an effort to promote better accessibility—particularly for those with visual disabilities.

In short, both features have made the Apple TV box appreciably more accessible in everyday use.

First, the larger text sizes. After installing tvOS 27 on my A15 Apple TV, I immediately made a beeline to Settings > Accessibility > Text Size and spent a few minutes playing around with the larger text setting. As you’d expect, the UI for it is exactly what you’d see on iOS or iPadOS: a horizontal slider with notched intervals, with text overhead showing the adjusted size. The default setting is at the far left, but I went across both ends of the spectrum at different points to see what the effect feels like at each place. One of the ancillary benefits of having a 77” display on my wall is, in my case at least, the TV’s sheer size compensates greatly for any perceived viewing problems. What this means is, I can leave tvOS as-is, without enabling many accessibility features, and still comfortably enjoy the experience. At a technical level, it also helps a great deal that (a) my TV is an OLED replete with infinite contrast and pixel-level control; and (b) tvOS renders the user interface in 4K. In other words, the house’s foundation is rock-solid even before adding accessibility.

After a few minutes of testing, I decided to leave the text slider one bigger than the default. In practice, the larger text sizes obviously are prevalent in the system apps: TV, Settings, etc. In the TV app, for example, using large text has material effects on, say, show descriptions and metadata. This is helpful because I’ve always struggled to read this information without physically walking up to the TV screen itself. On the other hand, I’m guessing third-party developers need to support the new API; in my testing, apps like Netflix and Pluto TV don’t (yet?) support larger text.

Most interesting in my experimentation, however, is the discovery that using large text also has a material effect on the presentation of the Home Screen and its icons. They look ginormous at any of the larger levels; too disorienting for me personally, but assuredly a godsend for someone else who absolutely needs supersized text for maximum readability.

Next, the customizable captions and subtitles. This feature has had the biggest quality-of-life impact for me, as my background as a CODA dictates I must watch TV with captions turned on. It’s weird without them. I have captions pretty large, set in SF Mono, and they are glorious. Even my low vision can easily read them from my sofa ten feet from the television. My only complaint is the design isn’t conducive to things like weather maps or chyrons, as the captions are so large they naturally obstruct imagery on screen. In my newfound home in the Portland metro, for instance, it can be damn hard to see the temperature in Beaverton or Hillsboro because the local news station’s meteorologist’s talking points will cover the numbers on their map. It’s annoying, but then again, a good illustration of why I like this sort of bimodal sensory input. I’m a hearing person, but I benefit from the concurrent visual feedback given to me by captions.

And yes, it’s worth underscoring yet again that captions and subtitles aren’t one and the same.

Apple adds 2019 Retina 4K iMac to vintage list

Juli Clover reports for MacRumors this week Apple has added my beloved 2019 Retina 4K iMac, the 21.5” version, to its list of vintage products. Vintage products are characterized as those “Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 5 and less than 7 years ago,” the company says in its support document.

“Products are added to the vintage list five years after they were last distributed for sale, and they’re moved to the obsolete list at the seven-year mark,” Clover wrote on Tuesday. “Vintage products can be repaired at Apple Stores and by Apple Authorized Service Providers if the parts are available, but that’s not guaranteed. Devices that are obsolete are not eligible for repair and Apple no longer makes repair components.”

This news makes me a little sad and wistful; until this past January, I’d used this machine—specced with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD—as my main computer since getting it home in July 2019. Almost 7 years of faithful service. The value proposition was incredible, and I’d love to know how many hundreds of thousands of words I churned out on that thing. I built Curb Cuts and my portfolio site on that machine. (Fun fact: I still use the Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad and Magic Trackpad, both with Lightning, that came with the iMac because why not? I have a USB-C to Lightning cable permanently attached to my XDR, and it works great. Lightning is still useful!) I know those in the Apple community raved about the larger, higher-res 5K 27” model, but I thoroughly enjoyed the smaller one. It was a great computer.

Nowadays, I’m living the laptop-as-desktop lifestyle. I have the 14” M2 Pro MacBook Pro from 2023 connected to the Pro Display XDR I got for Christmas last year. I love the monitor in all its 6K, 32” glory, but miss having the iMac’s onboard mic and speakers. Likewise, I don’t love the laptop on my desk only because I don’t move it around. I feel like a more “sedentary” Mac like a Mac mini would be better, but as it stands, I’m likely soon to get a Thunderbolt dock or something through which to neatly route my rat’s nest of cables. Spec-wise, my MacBook has 32GB RAM and a 2TB SSD. The biggest quality-of-life upgrade has been moving to Apple silicon on macOS, which I’d purposely missed out on for the most part because my trusty old iMac was chugging along so well and still receiving software updates.

Google Announces Sign Language To Text Model for Pixel 11

I’m late to this, but last month Google’s DeepMind Sign Language Team announced Sign Language To Text (SL2T), which the company described as "a massively multilingual sign-language-to-text translation model” that “marks a breakthrough in quality and generality.” The feature is available on Google’s Pixel 11 phones, in Gboard and Live Transcribe, in American Sign Language at launch, with “more devices and additional languages” to come.

"Similarly to how hearing users can use dictation to speak instead of typing, [Sign Language To Text] enables Deaf users to sign to their phone anywhere they’d normally type,” Google wrote in its blog post published on August 12. “You can sign to search the web, draft messages or documents, and ask Gemini to solve queries or execute tasks. In Live Transcribe, you can sign responses in conversations instead of having to type back and forth. According to our testers, signing in ASL is faster, more natural, and more delightful than typing in English.”

The project, with more than 100,000 hours’ worth of data spanning over 50 signed languages, was conceptualized by Sam Sepah, a Deaf employee at Google. I interviewed him in May 2023 about a similar initiative involving AI and ASL.

As Google explained, sign languages matter not merely linguistically—they matter culturally too.

“Sign languages are the primary languages of Deaf communities around the world and the cornerstone of Deaf cultural identity. There is great diversity among deaf people in terms of their level of proficiency in signing, speaking, reading, and writing, so it is important to support access in all modalities,” the company said. “Deaf people can benefit from sign language processing in the same way that hearing people benefit from spoken language processing, plus the technology opens new possibilities for bridging the communication gap between Deaf and hearing communities. Despite this opportunity for positive social impact, progress in sign language AI has been slow—both because building AI for sign languages presents complex challenges and because widespread misconceptions exist about how the languages themselves work.”

The Pixel 11 line was announced last month with an event in New York City.

Google Releases Motion Assist Accessibility Feature

Abner Li reports for 9to5 Google this week Google has released its new Motion Assist accessibility feature to Pixel and Samsung phones. The feature, which requires Android 17, is Google’s analogue to the similarly-scoped Vehicle Motion Cues on iOS, whereby a series of dots move about the screen in an effort to combat motion sickness while in a vehicle.

“The aim [of Motion Assist] is to reduce motion sickness when you’re in a car, bus, or other moving vehicle with an onscreen bubbles overlay that adjusts to the device’s motion,” Li wrote on Monday.

Motion Assist can be customized, including its color, size, and opacity. It can also be added to Quick Settings.

As Li notes, Google announced Motion Assist as part of its September 2026 Android Drop. The functionality shipped alongside Find Hub Remembered and Gemini Live Guided Vision.

Accessibility an afterthought in media coverage of software updates

As promised last week, Apple on Monday released its “OS 27” class of software updates to the public.

There are “.0” releases for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS, and watchOS. In addition, Apple also released iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 26.7, as well as macOS 15.8 Sequoia, for users who wish not to upgrade their device(s) just yet. Personally, I updated every device I’m regularly using right now after not riding the beta train over the summer. Even my beloved OG HomePod and its A8 processor in my office was updated to the newest version of the HomePod software.

As I wrote on Mastodon, I find it disappointing that nearly all of the OS 27 reviews at various publications give nary a mention to accessibility. The lone exception I’ve seen is John Voorhees’ review of macOS Golden Gate for MacStories, who mentions new features such as Accessibility Reader and more. I don’t expect these more “mainstream” reviewers to be accessibility aesthetes, but for the sake of completeness, it seems reasonable to at least include a few sentences on the new accessibility features in a given release. Apple announced its new suite of accessibility software weeks before WWDC happened, and of course the implication is the features the company officially and coyly said was coming “later this year” were destined for… the software updates released today. What’s ironic about the lack of acknowledgment of accessibility is, for all the breathlessness with which people have discussed Siri AI’s potential utility on blogs and podcasts, the all-new VoiceOver demonstrated in the spring indeed leverages a bunch of Apple Intelligence technology. And yet, these reviews—in and of themselves, comprehensive and well written—read as though accessibility doesn’t exist—despite accessibility getting ahead of the annual hoopla that is WWDC news. This is because Apple has commemorated Global Accessibility Awareness Day for the last several years.

These are not omissions of malice on the writers’ part, but they sting nonetheless—understandably so.