In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day on Friday, Apple held a concert at One Infinite Loop complete with a performance from Stevie Wonder.
The company had promoted the importance of accessibility features throughout the week, beginning with the release of a series of “Designed for” videos that highlighted how Apple users with disabilities are assisted via certain features. These features included VoiceOver and Made for iPhone hearing aids accompanied by personal stories from those that benefit from them.
Thank you to the incomparable Stevie Wonder for lifting hearts and celebrating accessibility with us! #GAAD pic.twitter.com/WvePkgte5R
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) May 19, 2017
Last Wednesday, CEO Tim Cook sat down with three accessibility activists from YouTube to discuss the uses of accessibility features across the range of Apple devices. During this, Cook explained his stance on accessibility and why the company have gone to great lengths to make sure that their devices are available to everyone:
“Apple is founded on giving people power to create things, to do things that they couldn’t do without those tools. And we’ve always viewed accessibility as a human right. And so just like human rights are for everyone, we want our products to be accessible for everyone. And so it’s a basic core value of Apple. We don’t make products for a particular group of people. We make products for everybody.
We feel very strongly that everyone deserves an equal opportunity and equal access. So we don’t look at this thing from a return on investment point of view — I’ve been asked that before. The answer is no, I’ve never looked at that. We don’t care about that.”
The company’s accessibility website was launched last October and demonstrates how Apple has integrated these unique features into the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered pic.twitter.com/CI38dIU8Vj
— James Craig (@cookiecrook) May 19, 2017
