Filip Brož In the past, I worked in a social institution that cares for people with mental and combined disabilities. I also had one blind client under my care. He initially used various compensatory aids and special keyboards to work and communicate with other people. However, these are very expensive, for example the purchase of a basic keyboard for writing Braille can cost up to several thousand crowns. It is much more efficient to invest in a device from Apple, which already offers accessibility functions as a base.
So we bought the client an iPad and showed him the possibilities and use of the VoiceOver function. Right from the first use, he was literally excited and couldn't believe what the device could do and what potential it had. The twenty-two-year-old blind Apple engineer Jordyn Castor has similar experiences.
Jordyn was born fifteen weeks before her due date. When she was born she weighed only 900 grams and her parents could fit in one hand. The doctors didn't give her much chance of survival, but everything turned out well in the end. Jordyn survived the premature birth, but unfortunately went blind.
The first computer
"During my childhood, my parents and surroundings supported me immensely. Everyone motivated me not to give up," says Jordyn Castor. She, like most blind or otherwise disabled people, came into contact with technology thanks to ordinary computers. When she was in the second grade, her parents bought her her first computer. She also attended the school's computer lab. "My parents patiently explained everything to me and showed me new technological conveniences. They told me, for example, how it works, what I should do with it, and I managed it," adds Castor.
Already in her childhood, she learned the basics of programming and realized that with her knowledge of computers and technology she could improve the world for all visually impaired people. Jordyn did not give up and, despite a severe handicap, graduated from the University of Michigan with a technical degree, where she also met Apple representatives for the first time at a job fair.
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“I was very nervous, but I told the people at Apple how excited I was to use the iPad I got for my seventeenth birthday,” says Castor. She notes that the device works incredibly well and she has never encountered anything like it before. She impressed Apple employees with her enthusiasm and they offered her an internship in 2015 for a position dealing with the VoiceOver function.
"After unpacking the iPad from the box, everything works immediately. Nothing needs to be set up," confides Jordyn in an interview. Her internship at Apple was so successful that she landed a full-time job at the end of it.
Programming for children
"I can directly affect the lives of blind people," Jordyn says of her work, noting that it's incredible. Since then, Jordyn Castor has been one of the central figures in the development of tools and accessibility for disabled users. In recent years, she was mainly in charge a new iPad app called Swift Playgrounds.
“I used to get a lot of Facebook messages from parents of blind children. They asked me that their children also want to learn programming and how to do it. I'm glad it finally worked out," Jordyn let herself be heard. The new application will be fully compatible with the VoiceOver function and will be used by visually impaired children and adults.
According to Castor, making Swift Playgrounds accessible can leave an important message for the next generation of blind children who want to program and create new apps. In the interview, Jordyn also describes her experience with different Braille keyboards. They help her with programming.
No other technology company can boast such a high level of accessibility for disabled people. During each keynote, Apple introduces new and additional improvements. At the last WWDC 2016 conference, they also thought of wheelchair users and optimized the watchOS 3 operating system for them. Apple Watch will now notify wheelchair users that they should take a walk instead of notifying a person to get up. At the same time, the watch can detect several types of movement, as there are several wheelchairs that are controlled in different ways with the hands. Jordyn confirms everything in the interview again and states that she regularly uses the Apple Watch.
