This is a surprisingly personal legal battle for me.

I'm totally blind. For a long while now, iOS has been the mobile accessibility leader, and unless you as a blind person have some specific reason to use Android, you're encouraged to use iOS.

Back in 2009 when Android accessibility was a joke, by which I mean as a developer I found major API issues within a few hours of development, I wrote one of the first and most popular Android screen readers. I think it was at least the first to be publicised even before TalkBack, where by "publicised" I mean TalkBack wasn't in Android's release notes, but I at least had an APK installable via tinyurl and posted to a mailing list. I quite literally had nothing else to do with my time at that point in my life, and Android 1.6 had an accessibility API, so on a lark I started writing a screen reader. The project has since died out, but for a long while, Spiel was a thin on Android.

iOS won't let me do anything like that. Further, iOS won't even let me code for it unless I use MacOS, and while MacOS has some decent accessibility features, it's been a royal pain in my ass to code on. I could elaborate, but to keep this comment brief, take it as a given from a subject area expert that developing on MacOS as a blind person is worse than any other platform I've used to date. And that's saying something, since Linux is my primary platform, and there are a number of blind developers who won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. I don't want to claim that coding on MacOS under VoiceOver isn't possible, but it's more difficult than it needs to be.

Yes, these are two huge corporations slugging it out, and it's hard to muster much sympathy for Epic. But I wouldn't be the developer I am today if it weren't for Android's openness letting me build a screen reader, and its further openness letting me build an accessible GPS navigation app which I've hacked on in some form for around a decade now, and which I've come to rely upon. It bugs me to no end that the more accessible mobile platform is so locked down such that a budding blind software engineer handed an iPhone can't code for it using JAWS or NVDA. So Apple is handing blind people internet-connected mobile computers with all sorts of sensors, and telling them the only way they can develop for these devices is by using a sub-par development environment that's going to fight them every step of the way and, likely, turn them off of software development more broadly. Then maybe we wonder why we don't see more blind software engineers?

So, go Epic. If they start being asses later then of course I'll oppose that, but if they have a big enough saber to start breaking up Apple's stranglehold on the most accessible mobile platform, they've got my support 100%. Hell yeah, the web wouldn't have been possible under Apple's rule. And while I respect those of you who want more secure devices and a curated experience, don't under-estimate the harm caused by locking blind developers out of one of the most accessible computing environments they're ever likely to get. No, jumping through certificate hoops to install something that will expire after a week isn't anything near what I'm asking for.

And to those of you who say "Just tell your blind friends to use a Pinephone," I wish I could, but Linux accessibility infrastructure has no support for touchscreens and touch events. Any of you millionaires reading this interested in funding that development? ;) Serious question, I'll work to put you in touch with the right folks.