Christin Hemphill works with companies to build inclusive experiences for customers and employees. That's a fancy way of saying that your bank, your onboarding materials and your VR game should all be accessible to you.

Christine Hemphill

Rain Michaels wears many hats. She is the UX designer behind Google’s Action Blocks and the new enhanced Select-to-Speak features on Chrome OS. As if that weren’t enough, she is also one of the maintainers for accessibility on the community-developed Drupal content management system, and she is a co-chair of W3C’s Cognitive Accessibility task force. On today's show, we talk about all of it, and how Rain thinks about making sites and tools accessible to people with a variety of cognitive challenges.

Rain Michaels

Excitement about the ways virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality could change our sensory experience of the world is palpable in some communities. But for people with accessibility needs, the very centrality of sensory experience can seem like a barrier. Designers and developers are working to change the perception and the reality of how disabled people interact with XR – extended reality. My guest, Reginé Gilbert, is teaching her student how to think inclusively when they build or envision XR experiences.

Reginé Gilbert

Indigenous people often face an array of barriers to economic opportunity. Poverty, oppression and simple lack of access to the Internet service are among them. We'll talk about expanding opportunity through education, career preparation and extension of broadband to indigenous communities in Canada. What you'll hear applies to any population whose physical separation diminishes opportunity.

Jace Meyer

Jace uses the term "Turtle Island" at several points during the conversation. Here is a definition for those who aren't familiar with the term.

Three Apple news junkies give the company's fall product announcement event a few days to settle. We weigh in on all the new hardware announcements and what we imagine could come next.

Ken Ray and Thomas Donville

Ten years ago, a pair of accessibility advocates decided to bring attention to the need for better accessibility in digital realms. They created Global Accessibility Awareness Day, or #GAAD. The annual event now attracts participation from Fortune 500 companies, including Apple, Google and Microsoft. But according to cofounder Joe Devon, #GAAD is still about developers doing the work to build things everyone can use.

Joe Devon

Mobile and desktop accessibility are similar, but different, just as mobile browsers can show the same pages desktop ones can, but with different interfaces and quirks. On this episode, we're talking about how to use mobile tools to test the accessibility of Web sites in iOS. My guest is the author of the #a11ytools testing suite.

Paul Adam

Mobile and desktop accessibility are similar, but different, just as mobile browsers can show the same pages desktop ones can, but with different interfaces and quirks. On this episode, we're talking about how to use mobile tools to test the accessibility of Web sites in iOS. My guest is the author of the https://apps.apple.com/us/app/a11ytools-web-accessibility/id1356241530 testing suite.

Beyond the checkboxes and status reports that tally the numbers of women, people of color, and (on rare occasions) people with disabilities an organization has hired, are the lived experiences of individuals who seek to thrive in a variety of STEM careers. We discuss these topics and lots more with an educator, an engineer and an advocate for meaningful, sustainable DEI in the workplace.

Lesley Shannon

NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory has a bird's-eye view of exploding stars, black holes and other distant astronomical phenomenon. Part of interpreting the massive amounts of data the telescope collects is creating data visualizations. But how can someone who is blind or visually impaired share in the beauty and the science of the images Chandra data scientists create? You're about to find out.

Christine Malec, J. J. Hunt, and Kim Arcand

Tech-assisted navigation means more than using your phone or other GPS-equipped device to find your way outside. Improving indoor navigation has long been a project for people with blindness and low vision, but its importance is growing for venues and tech companies, too.

Mike May