Long-form writing from our team and community — research, opinion, and the stories of people our work reaches.
Bolting accessibility onto a product late is how we ended up with second-class experiences. We argue for voice-first as the default — not an afterthought mode.
Our first users live on networks where a 200KB page is a meaningful cost. Here's what we changed in the build pipeline — and why it helped sighted users too.
A blind longboard surfer can feel terrain his eyes can't report. We learned the same lesson building TE — the richest signals often aren't visual.
Hours on real devices with real users who had never touched a screen reader. Patterns we did not expect, and three fixes we shipped the next week.
Real people, real independence. These are the stories that remind us why the work matters.
Pete Gustin has been a professional longboard surfer for most of his adult life — and blind for most of that. His craft is built on touch, sound, timing, and a trusted spotter. We follow his line to understand why voice-first tools we build for the web borrow the same principle: the richest signals often aren't visual.
A longboard surfer who has been blind for most of his career reads waves with his feet, ears, and a spotter in the channel. His craft is a working demo of what 'voice-first' and 'feel-first' can be.
Haben's career is a reminder that the 'access' in accessibility is a practice, not a compliance checkbox. She changed the courts. She is still changing the internet.
The first blind climber to summit Everest did it with a team, a rope, and a patiently-built toolkit of haptic and verbal cues. Good assistive tech is the same discipline at smaller scale.
The MasterChef winner runs a restaurant kitchen by smell, sound, timing, and muscle memory. Every visit is a case study in adaptive design, translated into the web.