For this CVS Health developer, making tech more accessible is personal

Cory Joseph has been blind since birth. So he's among the people Apple aims to serve with an addition to its App Store called 'Accessibility Nutrition Labels,' one of a raft of features the company announced earlier this week to mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
Once the labels go live later this year, each app's listing will detail the accessibility features it supports, such as the VoiceOver screen reader, voice input, options to adjust text size and screen contrast, and captioned audio. These enabling technologies can be the difference between an app being essential and unusable: 'Having this level of transparency from the App Store is huge,' says Joseph.
He isn't just one of the users who will benefit from that information, though. As a principal accessibility solutions architect at CVS Health, Joseph is in the business of making sure software works for everybody. Given his employer's scale—it's the world's second-largest healthcare company by revenue and reaches 100 million people a day—it's a job with the potential for deep real-world impact.
When using CVS's apps, 'everyone's trying to find the best care, and we want to make sure that's barrier-free for everyone,' explains Joseph. The 6-year-old team he's on has been responsible for achievements that go well beyond taking advantage of the core accessibility features offered by Apple and other platform providers.
In 2020, for instance, the company introduced a CVS Pharmacy app feature called Spoken Rx —'a baby of mine,' Joseph says. Special radio-frequency identification (RFID) labels on prescription containers enable it to read aloud vital information such as dosage instructions. CVS Health has also made some of its investments in accessibility freely available to other developers by open-sourcing them, including iOS and Android code, an automated system for testing website usability, and tools for annotating web designs in Figma.
As a field, accessibility has come a long way since Apple first dedicated a team to it, initially known as the Office of Special Education. Over 40 years, the company has built a wealth of functionality into its products to facilitate their use by people with disabilities, including the technologies that make the iPhone useful even if you can't see its touchscreen interface. Some of its recent advances, such as on-device generation of custom synthetic voices, would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. This week's announcements even include support for brain-computer interfaces.
By contrast, there's nothing gee-whizzy about the Accessibility Nutrition Labels themselves. They just summarize the features that a given app has enabled. But by doing that in such a straightforward, prominent way, they'll not only aid millions of users but also give some glory to the software makers who take accessible design seriously. Rather than be embarrassed by listings that make their lack of effort obvious, developers who don't yet have much to brag about might finally get with the program.
Joseph hopes that the labels' associations are only positive. 'It's easy to think about this sort of thing as a badge of shame, and I think that's not the right way to think about this,' he told me. 'This is an opportunity for independent developers, large organizations, and everyone in between to highlight the good work they do.'
Even though Joseph works for a company that has dedicated significant mindshare and money to that good work, he's up front about the obstacles to rapid progress that large companies face, even when they have all the right intentions. 'I would be lying if I said that there aren't challenges,' he told me. 'We're a gigantic organization. There are challenges in every gigantic organization. Of course, we balance all of our work and plan everything out as best as we can, and we deliver the most successful experience that we can across our applications.'
The good news, he adds, is that CVS Health-size resources aren't necessary to make software accessible. 'Realistically, it's easier for smaller developers,' he says. 'They can move more quickly, they can update their code faster, and they can adapt to and take in their user feedback in real time and make those changes by engaging directly. For independent and smaller developers, this shouldn't be a burden.'
I find that take heartening. And if Joseph is right that app creators don't have to be humongous to get inclusive design right, Accessibility Nutrition Labels will soon prove it.
You've been reading Plugged In, Fast Company 's weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you're reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I'm also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
More top tech stories from Fast Company

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Yahoo

6 minutes ago

• Yahoo

Save Your Batteries, This Solar-Powered Security Camera Is 50% off Right Now

Are you looking to outfit your home with a new smart security camera? While sales events like Prime Day in July are a great time to buy, you can get this excellent Eufy wireless solar-powered 2K security camera today for only $65. The Eufy Solocam S220 is a capable outdoor security camera like any other, only it has a few fancy tricks up its sleeve. You won't have to run a bunch of long power wires or deal with constantly replacing or recharging batteries, something most security cameras struggle with. That's because this outdoor security camera is solar-powered and only needs about three hours of sunlight to keep tabs on your home daily. Eufy's Solocam S220's MSRP is $130, although it is often discounted to under $100. Lucky for you, Amazon just slashed the price by 50%, making this stellar camera only $64.99. So, what does this camera offer, and what can you expect for your money? Well, quite a bit, thankfully. It's easy to mount just about anywhere, although you'll want a spot with plenty of sunshine. Then, pair it with the Eufy app, and you'll get crystal-clear 2K resolution video of all the happenings around your home. While the battery inside is charged by the solar cell, you shouldn't have to deal with it at all. The Eufy Solocam S220 offers night vision thanks to an Infrared LED and movement detection. It also uses AI to detect familiar faces, animals, and more to know when a notification is worth sending. That way, you won't get alerts for a branch blowing in the wind. This outdoor solar-powered security camera only takes about five minutes to install. It has a durable IP67 rating to handle any outdoor conditions, 2-way audio, and custom security zones you can customize in the app, to name a few. More importantly, there's no monthly fee with Eufy, so you buy once and enjoy peace of mind for years to come. If there's a downside, the unit only has 8GB of storage, so storage space is somewhat limited. Either way, this solid camera makes home security a breeze. Grab yours before it sells out.

Yahoo

7 minutes ago

• Yahoo

Lightroom is working on a solution to my most-hated part of photo editing – and I couldn't be more excited

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Between taking photos and editing photos sits one of my least favorite parts of photography: culling, or the process of choosing which photos to edit. As a wedding photographer, culling a gallery of several thousand images takes hours of clicking through to find the best shots. But Adobe Lightroom is working on a new tool that could help speed up the culling process. In a teaser on social media, Adobe shared that developers are working on AI filters, a tool that works to recognize throw-away shots, like shots that are out of focus and blinking portraits. The AI filters, like many of the Lightroom tools, use a slider, allowing photographers to control how strictly to apply these auto-selection filters. A clean-up slider will also help remove accidental shutter triggers, as well as shots that are over- or underexposed. The AI will also be able to auto-group similar shots together, like those taken with burst mode. AI culling tools aren't new – but the tools that exist are third-party platforms and plug-ins that add to the growing number of subscriptions. While I hate culling, my growing subscription aversion has prevented me from buying AI culling software. The idea of getting faster culling without another subscription is one that I can get on board with (albeit one that has recently increased in price). I'm a Lightroom Classic user, and many of the latest AI-based tools have saved me a lot of time. If AI can do to culling what subject selection did to masking, then such a tool would save me hours of sifting through photographs. Sometimes, accidental photos end up as happy surprises – an out-of-focus shot that still captures the emotion of the moment, for example. That's why I'm excited by AI-supportive culling that adds speed yet still leaves the photographer in the driver's seat. But where I think AI culling can save the most time is picking the best shot out of several similar images. I spent a lot of time looking at similar photos to find the one that's the sharpest and discarding the close-eye shots. When I chatted with Adobe during the B&H Bild Expo in New York, Adobe indicated the AI filtering would be coming later this year to both Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Desktop. AI-based subject detection has saved me hours on tasks like whitening teeth, without even using generative AI. I have high hopes that the upcoming Lightroom AI Filters tool brings more of the same time-saving shortcuts to culling. Tired of culling too? Browse the best photo culling software. Or, take a look at the best photo editing software.

Yahoo

21 minutes ago

• Yahoo

Tesla vs. Waymo: What is the difference between the vehicles?

Tesla's robotaxis are set to hit the streets of Austin, Texas. When it comes to self-driving vehicles, the EV giant faces stiff competition from the Alphabet-backed Waymo (GOOG, GOOGL), which already has vehicles on the roads in several cities, one of which may soon be New York City. Stifel NextGen Transport analyst Stephen Gengaro has ridden in both vehicles. He shares his key takeaways from his experiences and why, ultimately, Tesla (TSLA) may have a leg up on the rival. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.