I appreciate that AppleVis won’t be as interesting to many TidBits readers as it was to its target audience of blind and low-vision people using Apple products, including me, but its closure is a devastating blow. 14+ years of self-help and friendly and companionable community, organically grown and benevolently overseen, with strong outreach and presence, ironically not unlike Tidbits, in a way that many mailing lists before then could not achieve due to the entry barrier. It had, among other things, app recommendations and awards, a podcast, its own Apple accessibility report card, and news and views commentary on Apple products and services and their updates from the blind/low-vision perspective. I will miss it dearly, no doubt about it. But all good things come to an end, and as discussed in the farewell note, the climate and demands for change made the place, in common with the turning world more generally, increasingly restless and turbulent, and I think the first duty of a volunteer-run site must of course be to those volunteers whose time and care is finite. Hopefully the spirit of AppleVis will find a way to be resurrected in some fashion, and circumstances will make it more agreeable for the mantel to be passed on. Farewell, AppleVis!
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It’s a tremendous loss.
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Looks like it will be back!
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Cautiously optimistic, especially since they’re keeping the editors. We’ll see what stewardship by Be My Eyes represents in terms of genuine editorial independence, but given they’re extremely committed to the community, I generally expect Good Things ™.
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