Apple is teaming up with leading educators for blind and deaf communities across the US to bring accessible coding to their schools. Beginning this fall, schools supporting students with vision, hearing or other assistive needs will start teaching the Everyone Can Code curricula for Swift, Apple’s programming language.
With teacher guides and lessons, students learn the basics on iPad with Swift Playgrounds which lets you use real code to solve puzzles and control characters with just a tap, to App Development with Swift to help aspiring app developers build their first iOS apps.
“Apple’s mission is to make products as accessible as possible,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We created Everyone Can Code because we believe all students deserve an opportunity to learn the language of technology. We hope to bring Everyone Can Code to even more schools around the world serving students with disabilities.”
The schools will tailor lessons using Apple’s accessibility technology, which has changed the lives of millions of people with vision, hearing, physical motor, cognitive or other assistive needs.
Apple collaborated with engineers, educators, and programmers from various accessibility communities to make Everyone Can Code as accessible as possible and will work in close coordination with schools to augment the curricula as needed, including providing additional tools and resources, such as tactile maps to enhance the understanding of coding environments for non-visual learners.
“Our students were tremendously excited at our first Everyone Can Code session earlier this year,” said Bill Daugherty, superintendent at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Austin. “There are more than 10,400 students with visual impairments in Texas, and the development of this curricula is going to be a big step in opening up coding opportunities for our students and those across the nation.”
The Everyone Can Code curricula is compatible with VoiceOver, an advanced screen-reading technology for people who are blind or low vision. VoiceOver is a gesture-based screen reader that describes nearly everything happening on your screen. With VoiceOver integration, Swift Playgrounds can take students step-by-step through learning Swift, all without needing to see the screen.
Accessibility features for people who are deaf or hard of hearing include FaceTime for capturing every gesture and facial expression, Type to Siri, closed captions, LED Flash for Alerts, Mono Audio and Made for iPhone hearing aids.
iPad and Everyone Can Code can also be used by students with physical motor limitations through Apple’s built in Switch Control, which enables switches, joysticks and other adaptive devices to control what is on your screen.
