Meet the Team That Makes It Possible for the Blind to Use Facebook

Jessie Lorenz can’t see Facebook. But it gives her a better way to see the world -- and it gives the world a better way to see her. She uses Facebook through an iPhone and a tool called Voiceover, which converts text into spoken words. It’s not a perfect arrangement -- Facebook photos are typically identified only with the word “photo” -- but in letting her read and write on the social network, Voiceover and other tools provide a wonderfully immediate way to interact with people both near and far.

Lorenz is one of about 50,000 people who actively use Facebook through Apple Voiceover. So many people are using the social network through such tools, Facebook now employs a team of thinkers dedicated to ensuring they work as well as possible. Jeff Wieland and Ramya Sethuraman work on the Facebook Accessibility team, an effor tto "build empathy into our engineering," says Wieland. “Our goal as a company is to connect the world. If you really believe that, we need to include people with disabilities,” Wieland said.