Conversation

Y'all know what, the internal ableism in the blind community makes me so mad! "Oh, well Apple's a big boy company, they can't afford to spend time and money making our experiences better. I mean, we're a second or third-class citizen and we should be proud of it! Oh yes Daddy Apple!" Like, what the fuck is wrong with some people? We spend money just like sighted people, and for some of us, we have to actually *gasp* save up for these devices because we're spending the rest of our SSDI money on, oh I don't know, food and rint. So, we buy these pricy devices because they're the best for us and can open so many doors for us, and then we have issues. So we call the people who are supposed to be experts on this shit, and they turn out to only turn on VoiceOver when we call them? That's like tech support for an app that's not even used the app before unless someone calls about it. Now, I don't give a damn it the teams that handle accessibility have to be broken into subteams, one for VO, one for VO + Braille because fucking Braille is important damn it, one for Zoom, all that. Honestly that ties into the whole idea that comes up in my mind, that accessibility is a huge area that cannot, simply cannot, be covered by a good 20 people that are trying to keep up with like 10 different VoiceOver-sized accessibility services. And for the love of all that is good, don't lump accessibility into DEI with your like 3 people in that one team. ugh!

And we deal with this. Obviously. Cause iOS is still the most popular OS for blind screen reader users around here. You know, we deal with a lot of shit. Then, other blind people go all "hahaha , switch to Android if you hate Apple so much, while I cum to WWDC reruns on my Apple TV connected to a HomePod stereo pair, oh yeah Daddy Tim, say good morning!" It's really invalidating, and makes at least me, wonder if I'm actually doing everything wrong. If my issues with the Mac are just me not being Superblind enough. Gotta reach Superblind 2! But no matter how much I train, I just can't get there. Ah well, must just be in their genes. I'm just a low-class blindie. They were just born smart, right? And you know, we should never be that way to each other. It's a great way to strengthen imposter syndrome in otherwise capable blind people. Oh, also, some say that "only 5% of blind people beta test Apple products." I wonder how the percentage is for sighted people? And should it be our Tim-given duty to beta test software on what's more than likely our only device, since a good 75% of us ***don't have jobs***? Fucking privileged assholes. Oh and before I forget, just because we're *only blind*, doesn't mean we're fucking less than other groups of disabled people. Fucking internal ableism is real. We, deserve, access!

#apple #accessibility #blind