Tech journalism’s accessibility problem - The Verge

Most of the largest digital publications don’t have consistent coverage of assistive technology. We asked journalists who have been on the beat for years how the industry can do better.

Six years ago, Apple introduced the touch bar, a thin touchscreen strip that replaced the usual row of function buttons on its MacBook Pros. To say it has been controversial would be an understatement.

Among tech media’s elite, it’s one of the most widely and consistently bemoaned gadget features in recent memory. “In several years it’ll just be a useless appendage, like the last protohuman with a tail,” Engadget wrote in its review of the most recent MacBook Pro. “Apple’s Touch Bar was an expensive gimmick, and I hated it as much as the disastrous butterfly keyboard,” CNET wrote in a column last year. Different Verge reviewers have referred to the little touchscreen strip as “hopelessly confused”, “baffling”, “dreaded,” “aggravating”, and “infinitely worse than a hard button” at various points in its life. To a bystander, it would appear that everyone in the market for a MacBook finds the thing wholly useless.

Everyone, that is, except accessibility-minded writers like Steven Aquino. Aquino, who is disabled, finds laptop keyboards difficult to use, due both to the fine motor skills required to perform the shortcuts and to the cognitive load required to remember them. The touch bar allows him to access in one tap features that would otherwise require multiple — everything from sending emails to selecting emojis.

“That the company packed so much functionality for disabled people in that thin strip of screen is nothing short of remarkable,” Aquino, a freelance journalist who covers accessibility, wrote in a column for Forbes.

As the touch bar has persisted through several cycles of MacBook Pro, with laptop reviewers unanimously complaining every step of the way, Aquino has been pleading with the public (and with his fellow tech writers) to understand how much the touch bar has benefitted him. Being its champion hasn’t been easy — at times, he’s felt like “a lone ranger.”

https://www.theverge.com/23205223/tech-journalism-accessibility-assistive-coverage

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