AppleVis Extra 75: Sarah Herrlinger and Dean Hudson from Apple Accessibility

In this edition of the AppleVis Extra, Dave Nason and Thomas Domville speak with Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple, and her colleague Dean Hudson, who is also a VoiceOver and braille user himself.On 22 June, Apple’s WWDC keynote highlighted the key changes and updates coming in iOS 14, iPad OS 14, Watch OS 7 and Mac OS Big Sur, from a largely mainstream perspective.This conversation with Sarah and Dean gives us the opportunity to learn much more about what’s new in the area of accessibility.Full Transcript of PodcastPlease note, This transcript was created solely for communication access. It is not a certified legal transcript and is not entirely verbatim.[Music]Announcer: An AppleVis original.[Transition sound]Sarah Herrlinger: Part of our job is to work on making sure that everything that everyone makes at Apple is accessible. It's also about making sure that there's some really fun things to surprise and delight as many of the communities that we support as we can each year and finding new ways and new communities as we move along. I think this year hopefully, is going to be another fantastic year.[Transition sound]Dean Hudson: On the technical side of things and when you're buried in the year, just sorting out details and what features will do what and you kind of get sort of lost in the trees and coming out for Dub Dub DC sort of look back and say, "Wow, these are some great features. You sort of put things in a broader perspective.[Transition sound]Sarah Herrlinger: Our end goal is always to make sure that whether it is a young student being asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up," and saying, "I want to be an engineer." Or someone who is already an adult looking at going into developing. We want to make sure that there's a next generation of developers out there, that are members of the blind community.[Music]Dave Nason: Hello and welcome to AppleVis Extra, this is episode number 75 and we are still in WWDC week. This is our third annual interview with Sarah Herrlinger and again she is joined by Dean Hudson and my name is Dave Nason. I'm joined in the hot seat by my co-host Thomas Domville. Thomas, how are you today?Thomas Domville: I'm doing great. What a week, boy. This has been a busy week, but we got lots of cool stuff to cover, for sure.Dave Nason: Really has yeah. We did a pretty long podcast on Monday night after the keynote. But it was largely focused on kind of what we'd seen in the keynote, the mainstream stuff and so hopefully today we'll get a bit more information about what's changed for us in the accessibility space.Thomas Domville: Absolutely.[Transition sound]Dave Nason: Sarah and Dean, thank you so much for joining us again. It's great to have you back.Sarah Herrlinger: Well, it's so wonderful to be here. We always enjoy being able to spend some time with you both.Dean Hudson: Yeah, it's fantastic.Dave Nason: I know. I hope you're both keeping well in these strange times.Sarah Herrlinger: Definitely. It has been some interesting months we've been going through and I hope everyone out there is safe and well, but we are still making sure that everything keeps moving forward here at Apple.Dave Nason: What a week it's been I'd say, it's…