The Aboard Podcast
Andrew Leland: Hacking Disability with AI
April 21, 2026
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47 min 27 sec
“The blind vibe-coding revolution is upon us.” On this week’s podcast, Paul and Rich are joined by Andrew Leland, the author of the Pulitzer-finalist The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight, to discuss how blind and low-vision people are using AI tools to create and adapt software to suit their accessibility needs. With limits to what any out-of-the-box software or device might do, is AI the way to give disabled people technological solutions that really work? Plus: Rich bravely makes it through the whole recording despite being surrounded by two massive Emacs stans.
Show Notes
- Andrew’s website, and his book, The Country of the Blind. His photograph here was taken by Ahndraya Parlato.
- The Believer is still going strong
- That’s Chancey Fleet at the NYPL.
- Joybubbles
- T. V. Raman’s Emacspeak
- “Colossal Cave Adventure: How playing interactive fiction games in the 1980s prepared me for becoming a blind computer user.”
Transcript
Transcript coming soon!