Inside out

Summary

Podcast: Click Here
Episode: Inside Out
Host: Dina Temple-Raston (Recorded Future News)
Guest: Andrew Leland (Journalist & Author)
Date: July 17, 2026

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Overview

This episode examines the dynamic relationship between accessibility, disability, and technology innovation. Host Dina Temple-Raston interviews journalist and author Andrew Leland, who argues that people with disabilities are not merely the recipients of tech accessibility fixes but often the originators, with mainstream technology frequently adopting their innovations. The episode challenges the dominant narrative of technological inclusion and explores the tension between genuine accessibility and corporate marketing. It also asks who is truly shaping the digital world, and how we might reframe the conversation from access to authorship.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Flipping the Accessibility Narrative (00:02–01:32)

• Dominant Narrative Challenged: The prevailing story is that tech creators are "on the inside," retrofitting designs when excluded users ask for access. However, Leland and Temple-Raston suggest that disabled people are often the leading innovators.
  • “The more you look at the history of technology, the less that story actually holds up.” —Dina Temple-Raston (00:02)
• Innovation Precedes Inclusion: Disabled users “tend to be ahead of the curve,” with their solutions frequently co-opted by mainstream technology.
  • “Disabled people always tend to be ahead of the curve. I think there are a lot of cases where the disabled innovation comes first and then it gets co opted.” —Andrew Leland (01:18)

2. Examples of Disability-Driven Innovation (04:32–07:29)

• Origins of Everyday Tech: Many now-mainstream features began as disability aids:
  • Audiobooks/Text-to-Speech: “Those innovations came from blind hackers and blind developers of that technology ... that then becomes Siri and Alexa and all of the voice assistants.” —Andrew Leland (05:11)
  • Apple Vision Pro: Marketed as futuristic hands-free tech, but “if you don't have hands or conventional hands, that is a real game changer ... for a low vision user, ... she could drag her screen to the size of an industrial refrigerator.” —Andrew Leland (06:06)
  • Meta’s Ray Ban Smart Glasses: Visual interpretation features allow blind users to independently read signs in airports or other public places, previously possible only with an assistant or caregiver.
    • “A lot of blind people, I think, are feeling quite thrilled about the kind of visual access it gives them ... in the past they could have ... only by hiring an assistant.” —Andrew Leland (06:52)

3. The Golden Age and Its Tradeoffs (07:29–09:28)

• Pros: The digital era provides unparalleled access—AI-generated voices and electronic textbooks have transformed possibilities for blind and disabled users.
  • “If you think about what it took for a blind person to get an accessible textbook in the past ... now you can have a tiny text file ... read in an AI generated voice that sounds indistinguishable from a human reader.” —Andrew Leland (07:44)
• Cons: Despite advancements, many digital spaces remain inaccessible. Most websites remain poorly coded for screen readers, creating new forms of exclusion.
  • “The vast, vast majority, like in the high 90th percentiles of the Internet, is in an inaccessible format to a screen reader.” —Andrew Leland (07:44)
  • Problem example: Screen readers miss web functions if the underlying code isn’t accessible (navigation menus, search bars labeled only as “button” etc.)

4. The Contradiction of Accessibility and Inclusion (09:04–09:28)

• Mixed Progress: Even as tech giants launch accessibility initiatives and hire disabled engineers, “my feeds are full of blind and disabled people talking about the access barriers that they still face. And they're often new access barriers. And so the sort of contradictions are very difficult to reconcile.” —Andrew Leland (09:04)

5. Accessibility as Corporate PR (12:43–13:40)

• Marketing vs. Substance: Companies derive PR value from advertising accessible features, but genuine commitment to accessibility remains uneven.
  • “All the tech giants ... have released TV ads ... that show disabled people having their worlds rocked by their tech ... that’s not going to be a lot of money for Meta ... but it is a sort of excellent PR investment.” —Andrew Leland (12:49)
• Not Always Altruistic: “I don't know that there's like a deep altruism from trillion dollar companies.” —Andrew Leland (13:23)
• Still, If It Helps: Even cynical efforts can result in community benefit. “If it turns out to be something that’s good for the community, then — okay, yes, I'll take it.” —Andrew Leland (13:37)

6. Surface vs. Substance in Implementation (13:54–14:13)

• ** Shallow Initiatives:** Many “disability-positive” ventures fail at basic access, e.g., unlabeled web buttons.
  • “Every week I see some disability positive initiative. Then the website has unlabeled buttons ... so that the screen reader user goes on and it says button button instead of back home about. ... That problem is a real smudge on the glass if you're actually trying to do disability work.” —Andrew Leland (13:54)
• Action Steps: “Just hire disabled people. Include disabled people. And not in a tokenized way, but in a deep sense where they have authorship over the product and the project.” —Andrew Leland (14:13)

7. The Value of Authorship & Community-Made Tools (14:13–15:25)

• Independent Innovation: Tools made by and for disabled people are uniquely intuitive, often “handmade and really fun ... a pleasure to use ... works and it breaks less often.”
• Nothing About Us Without Us: The mantra from the disability rights movement is key to shifting from access to authorship.
  • “Nothing about us without us, nothing about us without us. And it shifts the conversation away from access and toward authorship. Not can I use this thing? But who gets to shape it?” —Dena Temple-Raston (15:25)

8. Inverting the Access Model (16:04–17:00)

• Disability as Invitation: Citing poet John Lee Clark’s essay “Against Access,” Leland argues for valuing disabled experiences as rich and desirable, not simply accommodating.
  • “Let me give you access. Let me give you a little on ramp into our world. And John Lee Clark’s point is like, well, why aren't you interested in our world?” —Andrew Leland (16:04)
  • “I want to. I want access to Joy Bubbles.” —Andrew Leland, referencing the legendary “phone phreaker” who created his own sonic utopia.

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Memorable Quotes

• “Disabled people always tend to be ahead of the curve.” —Andrew Leland (01:18)
• “Those innovations [text-to-speech, audiobooks] came from blind hackers and ... then becomes Siri and Alexa ...” —Andrew Leland (05:11)
• “The digital landscape itself has opened up so many doors ... but at the same time, the digital world also creates a tremendous number of new barriers ...” —Andrew Leland (07:44)
• “All the tech giants ... have released TV ads ... that show disabled people having their worlds rocked by their tech ... it is a sort of excellent PR investment.” —Andrew Leland (12:49)
• “Nothing about us without us, nothing about us without us.” —Dena Temple-Raston (15:25)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:02–01:32 — Introducing the episode’s alternative narrative of accessibility; Andrew Leland’s thesis
• 04:32–07:29 — Disability community innovations and mainstream tech adoption
• 07:29–09:28 — Golden age of accessibility and ongoing digital barriers
• 12:43–13:40 — Accessibility as corporate PR, questioning true motives
• 13:54–14:13 — Real-world failures of superficial accessibility efforts
• 15:25–17:00 — Rethinking access: authorship and valuing disabled perspectives

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Conclusions

This episode powerfully upends the classic accessibility story, demonstrating that people with disabilities are often the original technologists and should be at the center of design and authorship—not merely seeking access to others’ systems. The dialogue urges tech companies to move beyond optics and PR, meaningfully include disabled innovators, and recognize that disability-driven design benefits everyone. At its core is an invitation to shift perspective: rather than constantly updating systems to let others in, we should seek access to the vibrant worlds already created by disabled people.

Transcript

[Dena Templewesten]

From recorded future news and prx, this is click here. There's a familiar story we tell about accessibility. Someone builds a technology and then someone else comes along and says I can't use it. So the people who built it go back and add something. A ramp, a screen reader, a button that actually says what it does. And in that version of the story, the people building the world are on the inside and everyone else is trying to get in. But the more you look at the history of technology, the less that story actually holds up. From Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click Here, a show about how technology is changing everything. I'm Dena Templewresten. Journalist and author Andrew Leland has spent years looking at the ways disability and technology shape each other, and he started noticing something. The story we tell about who is helping whom is often exactly backwards.

[Andrew Leland]

Disabled people always tend to be ahead of the curve. I think there are a lot of cases where the disabled innovation comes first and then it gets co opted.

[Dena Templewesten]

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[Andrew Leland]

I think in looking at the history of disability technology and assistive technology, disabled people always tend to be ahead of the curve. I think for reasons that you have been exploring, which is that the built world, the world of technology and buildings and architecture and design more broadly, tends to exclude them. And so as a result they have to engage in this creative thinking and often new technologies are leveraged with the problems of accessibility in mind and then it sort of gets co opted for the mainstream

[Dena Templewesten]

and that creative thinking can go in either direction.

[Andrew Leland]

I think there are a lot of cases where the disabled innovation comes first and then it gets co opted and then there's other times when there's a mainstream product and then the disabled people sort of have to figure out a solution or innovate a solution. Like thinking about audiobooks and like Text to speech for instance. Like those innovations came from blind hackers and blind developers of that technology working with sighted engineers to create like a synthetic speech that would lead to a screen reader that then becomes Siri and Alexa and all of the voice assistants

[Dena Templewesten]

that we know, audiobooks and text to speech are one version. Something starts in the disability community and eventually makes its way to everyone else. Apple's wearable headset, the Vision Pro, is the other. Initially the company marketed it as a glimpse of the future, but Andrew found people using it as an accessibility tool.

[Andrew Leland]

You can control the cursor with your eyes and eye movements. You know, I think Apple marketed that as something that would be really great just for this sort of cool, futuristic hands free moving. But if you don't have hands or conventional hands, that is a real game changer. And you know, it's a similar thing with a low vision user I met for whom the Apple Vision Pro became the sort of ultimate low vision machine because she could drag her screen to the size of an industrial refrigerator. Whatever article she was reading could suddenly be at the size and the scale that it would require $100,000 of projection equipment to get to otherwise.

[Dena Templewesten]

Or take Meta's Ray Ban smart glasses. They're less bulky than the Vision Pro and something you might actually wear out in the world.

[Andrew Leland]

And they do this thing that blind people are really geeking out about in this time, which is that you can, you know, look down a hallway and say, okay, are there any signs? Tell me what all the signs in this hallway say. You know, and if you're in an airport and you're on your own, like, that's a real game changer. A lot of blind people, I think, are feeling quite thrilled about the kind of visual access that it gives them that in the past they could have. But they could have it only by basically hiring an assistant, right? Or really leaning on a family member to say, okay, but like, what else do you see there?

[Dena Templewesten]

The excitement around these tools is real, but so are the trade offs. For example, many of them collect enormous amounts of personal information and most are pretty pricey, making them inaccessible in an entirely different way.

[Andrew Leland]

It's so tricky because we are living in some ways in a real golden age of accessibility. You know, I think the digital landscape itself has opened up so many doors. You know, if you think about what it took for a blind person to get an accessible textbook in the past would be hours and hours of labor, extremely expensive, and now you can have a tiny text file and it can be read in an AI generated voice that sounds indistinguishable from a human reader. But at the same time, the digital world also creates a tremendous number of new barriers where, you know, the vast, vast majority, like in the high 90th percentiles of the Internet, is in an inaccessible format to a screen reader.

[Dena Templewesten]

The problem is that a screen reader doesn't actually see a webpage the way a sighted user might see it. A screen reader relies on the information underneath it, the code that tells it what it's looking at. And when that information isn't there, the software can miss huge chunks of what's on the screen. A sighted person might see a navigation menu, a search bar, or a button that says home. A screen reader might simply announce button or image. To one user, the site works perfectly, to another, it can be almost impossible to navigate.

[Andrew Leland]

And so it's difficult for me to wrap my head around because I think, like, okay, well, it's great. Like Google and Apple and Meta have accessibility initiatives and they're hiring disabled engineers. And it's Incredible. And at the same time, my feeds are full of blind and disabled people talking about the access barriers that they still face. And they're often new access barriers. And so the sort of contradictions are very difficult to reconcile.

[Dena Templewesten]

And then Andrew brought up another contradiction. The companies that are best at telling stories about accessibility aren't always as good at accessibility itself. That's after the break. Support for Click Here comes from Servil. Every company says AI will make employees more productive, but most employees are still stuck waiting on it, waiting for app access and password resets, waiting for someone to fix a laptop issue so they can get back to work. That operational drag adds up fast, and IT teams are overwhelmed trying to keep up. Servl was built to change that. You describe what you want in plain English and Servl builds it for you. No complicated workflow, no consultants, just faster support and fewer tickets slowing everybody down. The platform is designed to eliminate repetitive tickets so it can focus on strategic work instead of constant firefighting. And unlike traditional automation tools, Servol doesn't require consultants or long implementation cycles. Servol positions it as the AI powered operational backbone of the company, not just a support function. Learn more or start a free four week pilot at cerval.com clickhere that's S E R V A L.com clickhere servol.com

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[Narrator/Promo Voice]

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[Dena Templewesten]

There is, Andrew says, a lot of power in being seen as a company that cares about accessibility.

[Andrew Leland]

Well, there's another dynamic there that I think we haven't talked about, which is the kind of marketing power that design for disability brings. All the tech giants, all the major players have released TV ads in the last year or two that show disabled people having their worlds rocked by their tech. And realistically those that's not going to be a lot of money for meta. Right? That's not a financial investment, but it is a sort of excellent PR investment.

[Dena Templewesten]

Well, and a good human investment too.

[Andrew Leland]

Sure, yes. But I don't know that there's like a deep altruism from trillion dollar companies.

[Narrator/Promo Voice]

No.

[Dena Templewesten]

Okay, fair enough. But if it turns out to be something that's good for the community, then

[Andrew Leland]

okay, yes, I'll take it.

[Dena Templewesten]

Andrew isn't dismissing these efforts. He's just saying that when companies are going through the motions of accessibility, but not really baking it in, the difference becomes obvious pretty quickly, especially to the people who depend on it.

[Andrew Leland]

I'm not exaggerating. Every week I see some disability positive initiative. Then the website has unlabeled buttons on it so that the screen reader user goes on and it says button button instead of back home about. And it's like that problem is a

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

real

[Andrew Leland]

smudge on the glass if you're actually trying to do disability work. So I think the bottom line is just hire disabled people. Include disabled people. And not in a tokenized way, but in a deep sense where they have authorship over the product and the project. I'll just add as an addendum. I'm very conflicted about that because the mainstream tech that works and is accessible is, does have a tremendous life changing community building impact on disability communities. But I am often just as drawn to like the weird tools that blind people make themselves. And you can sort of feel it when, when I'm using an app that was built by a blind person so you know, doesn't have all the engineering muscle and like Apple's entire accessibility team has built something but there's also like just a handmade and really fun feeling to it that and it often works and it breaks less often or it's just like a pleasure to use. That's why I get excited when I hear Disabled people getting into design and getting into engineering, because I think we need more products that are made by and for disabled people. The old, often repeated but not repeated enough adage from disability rights movement is

[Dena Templewesten]

nothing about us without us, nothing about us without us. And it shifts the conversation away from access and toward authorship. Not can I use this thing? But who gets to shape it? And that brought me back to Joe and Grecia, who were Joy Bubbles, the blind phone freaker we met in Tuesday's podcast. Joe grew up at a time when nobody was talking about making technology accessible, but he wasn't waiting for someone to invite him in. He was already in there, using the telephone in ways its designers never imagined. Andrew says there's another way to think about that.

[Andrew Leland]

There's a really wonderful poet named John Lee Clark who's deafblind, and he has a really great essay called Against Access. And of course he's not against access. Right. But his point is that, like, too often non disabled people are like, okay, let me give you access. Let me give you a little on ramp into our world. And John Lee Clark's point is like, well, why aren't you interested in our world? Like, what? You know, why don't you want access to us? You know, he kind of has this really strong idea that deafblind life is this rich terrain that non disabled people or that, you know, seeing hearing people should be curious about. And I think in Joy Bubble's story, he built this beautiful sonic networked utopia for himself. And. And yeah, there was oppression and yeah, there was marginalization. But, like, at the end of the day, I want to. I want access to Joy Bubbles.

[Dena Templewesten]

I love that I want access to Joy Bubbles because maybe that's what we missed in Tuesday's story. We told you about the things Joe found inside the telephone system. The hidden tones, the secret language, the possibilities its designers hadn't imagined. But Andrew is asking us to notice something else. Joe didn't just find a way into the world that already existed. He made one of his own. This is Click Here. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Today's show was written and produced by Megan Dietre, Sean Powers, Erica Guida, Zach Hirsch and Maya Fawaz. It was edited by Karen Duffin and Sarah Cavedo and fact checked by Darren Ancrum. Original music is by Ben Levingston with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley, our illustrator is Megan Gough, and our sound designers and engineers are Jake Cook and Jesse Niswonger. I'm Dina Tumble Raston, and thanks for listening.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

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[Recorded Future News Announcer]

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