If Apple gets apple intelligence right, the biggest Beneficiary will be accessibility

Although I’ve covered it before, I’ve admittedly heretofore been reticent to write more about Apple Intelligence because I’m skeptical my viewpoints will be heard. The seemingly cacophonous opinion, industry-wide, is Apple Intelligence—and Siri in particular—is shit and irredeemable. Accessibility isn’t exactly juicy headline fodder.

But then, compulsion. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman put out a blockbuster scoop today in which he reports Apple chief executive Tim Cook has tapped Vision Pro boss Mike Rockwell to take over Siri from ostensible AI leader John Giannandrea. Gurman notes Cook purportedly has “lost confidence” in Giannandrea’s ability to come through in product development, adding Rockwell will report to the company’s software boss in senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi. Gurman writes Apple’s so-called “Top 100” leaders met in a secretive offsite retreat to discuss, amongst other things, the existential crisis regarding Apple’s languishing place in the AI standings.

At a macro level, the utter contempt for Apple Intelligence (and, by extension, Siri) at this point is so thick it’s hard to find the proverbial silver lining within this darkest of clouds. But I say it is doable—the good within Apple Intelligence is there, whether tech journalists and armchair analysts want to acknowledge it or not. In my opinion, Apple Intelligence is one of those products which exemplify why more robust reporting on disability inclusion vis-a-vis accessibility is so sorely needed at tech desks in media organizations everywhere. By my estimation, there has been a pittance of focus on Apple Intelligence and accessibility; by contrast, the lion’s share of the coverage has been, while constructive in spots, has been mostly overwhelmingly negative in tone.

Take Image Playgrounds, for instance. Most observers in the Apple community loathe the feature for being goofy and generally useless, also pointing to the general distaste over how robots can now create. What this perspective lacks is, of course, empathy for disabled people. Whatever you, able-bodied reader, may think of artificial intelligence and tools like Midjourney, for example, the reality is it’s extremely plausible the advent of Image Playgrounds gives an aspiring artist with disabilities—someone who may not be able to use an Apple Pencil on iPad Pro—a conduit through which to unleash their creativity and self-expression. This is not at all trivial, regardless of one’s philosophical views on art or their views on the quality of Image Playgrounds’ output. It’s perfectly okay for Image Playgrounds to not be your jam, but to sneer at it wholesale reeks of elitism and dishonesty. On the contrary, Image Playgrounds very well could be a disabled person’s jam by empowering them with an accessible way to build things.

The same argument applies to Writing Tools. Perhaps Stephen King needn’t use it; I know I don’t need to use it. Still, the fact the feature exists at all is a net positive. To wit, someone who has certain cognitive conditions, or fine-motor skills which hinders their typing ability (or some combination thereof) may find Writing Tools eminently useful at making creating prose more accessible—and more cogently understood. Like Image Playgrounds, it’s absolutely fair to critique Writing Tools in how performant it is, but it’s critical to bear in mind other use cases beyond one’s own. The problem is, obviously, most people focus on the most people—those whom decidedly aren’t disabled people.

Beyond Image Playgrounds and Writing Tools, there’s more to be appreciative of in an accessibility context. The ability to double-tap the bottom edge of one’s iPhone to type to Siri is a huge deal. That functionality was born out of the longstanding Type to Siri accessibility feature; Apple positions this new version as a way to use Siri stealthily so as to not cause disturbances. The truth is it makes Siri more accessible for people like me who stutter and for those in the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community. More crucially, that Apple’s software engineering groups expanded an accessibility feature for the mainstream is a shining example of how accessibility oftentimes is an incubator for innovation. The pointer in iPadOS? It originated in AssistiveTouch. My years-long understanding from sources has been it was handed off internally to the wider iPadOS software teams so they could massage it into a feature for the masses. Likewise with Double Tap on Apple Watch, as it too began life as part of the suite of accessibility options in watchOS. The salient point is simple: if one wants evidence of innovation at Apple, look no further than in accessibility. The examples I’ve illustrated here give the utmost credence to the company’s mantra that accessibility truly can be for everyone.

From an accessibility angle, what makes Siri so frustrating goes beyond aptitude—it’s functional. Just this week, I ran into an issue when, after coming home from a walk around the neighborhood, Siri insisted it couldn’t unlock my front door because my accessories don’t support it. They do! I can enter the passcode on my Nest × Yale lock just fine, but using Siri was more accessible because my hands were full. I’ve written at length about how voice-first computing can do so much for the disability community that goes further than sheer world knowledge and trivial bits like who won Super Bowls.

All of this goes without mentioning the fact Apple Intelligence integrates with system accessibility stalwarts such as VoiceOver. It’s an exclusive advantage for the company (and its users!) much in the same way Apple silicon-based hardware can be in running large-scale LLMs. These advantages are, again, non-trivial—especially in accessibility.

I wholeheartedly believe my friend and peer John Gruber when he said last week something is rotten down 280 in Cupertino. There’s surely some amalgamation of hubris, lack of preparedness, and incompetence at play to explain Apple’s floundering with Apple Intelligence as it tries to catch up with the rest of the industry. Zac Hall at 9to5 Mac, another friend of mine, described the company’s problems in a recent op-ed; he writes, quite eloquently, in part “the floor for what’s expected of a system like Siri is quickly rising [while] Siri is waiting for someone to decide if maintenance can feasibly repair the elevator while we all take the stairs to the top of the world’s tallest building.”

To be clear, I don’t discount the idea that Apple Park is figuratively on fire right now given the bone-chilly reception to Apple Intelligence since it debuted back in October. Apple is neither beyond reproach nor above criticism. By the same token, the sheer existence of this very piece pointing out the positives with Apple Intelligence is equally valid and important—not to soothe Apple’s pain, but to boost representation of people like me who use Apple products on the margins. This moment is a perfect opportunity to remind people why earnest disability coverage in tech journalism matters. Accessibility matters—and not in the “gee whiz, that’s great for folks” ways that, in all honesty, I personally find patronizing. The fact is Apple Intelligence is chockfull of de-facto accessibility features that, like Apple Pay, aren’t designed expressly for accessibility’s sake but nevertheless have applicability to enabling people with disabilities to do stuff.

Unlike Gruber, I didn’t get the statement from Apple that it’s delaying Siri features. I’m not mad about it in the slightest; it’s just a little beyond my purview. That said, I do use Apple Intelligence on a daily basis and have been attentive to what’s going on. I don’t have rose-colored glasses on. But with this morning’s news from Gurman comes (more) optimism that, should Rockwell and Federighi and troops right the ship, Apple Intelligence won’t merely improve Apple’s play and catapult it in the standings—it’ll make the company’s plethora of platforms that much more accessible for everyone.