Home Awareness PETITION: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Samsung, and Adobe – Make Your Devices and Software More Accessibility Friendly for Neurodivergent Persons

PETITION: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Samsung, and Adobe – Make Your Devices and Software More Accessibility Friendly for Neurodivergent Persons

by Shaylynn Hayes-Raymond

At present, many companies are not significantly serving the needs of neurodivergent persons such as those with Autism, Misophonia, Misokinesia, Epilepsy, OCD, Sensory Processing Disorder and more. For those with audial and visual sensitivities, many of these operating systems are not set up in a way that users can use devices such as computers, cellphones, and tablets in a way that does not cause issues. This is especially important as these operating systems are important for modern life. Many of these programs are required for modern jobs.

The following concerns are ones which we are asking these companies to incorporate into their operating systems:

  • The ability to choose more of which sounds are playing or not playing (rather than all notifications on or off).
  • The ability to choose custom sounds for all operating system sounds
  • The ability to turn off the blinking cursor caret which is very distracting, and also capable of making some neurodivergent sick or experience fight-flight
  • The ability to change the device screen settings to have more levels of brightness and less (a higher/lower range)
  • The ability for loading spinners and all other flashing buttons to be turned off when “reduce animation” is turned on
  • The ability to easily change frame rates for devices such as mobile devices in accessibility settings
  • The ability to turn off text boxes while using speech to text
  • More close-captioning options for mobile devices, particularly for notification
  • Forced “reduce animation” in thirdparty applications on phones/devices
  • PDF readers and particularly ALL Adobe software not ignoring system settings (such as non-blinking caret).
  • Ability to make any moving icons, images, or gifs, a static feature (including wifi/bluetooth buttons on mobile)

SIGN THE PETITION HERE