Sometimes you acquire a company for the assets and sometimes you do it for the talent. Today Workday announced it was buying Rallyteam, a San Francisco startup that helps companies keep talented employees by matching them with more challenging opportunities in-house.
The companies did not share the purchase price or the number of Rallyteam employees who would be joining Workday .
In this case, Workday appears to be acquiring the talent. It wants to take the Rallyteam team and incorporate it into the company’s engineering unit to beef up its machine learning efforts, while taking advantage of the expertise it has built up over the years connecting employees with interesting internal projects.
“With Rallyteam, we gain incredible team members who created a talent mobility platform that uses machine learning to help companies better understand and optimize their workforces by matching a worker’s interests, skills and connections with relevant jobs, projects, tasks and people,” Workday’s Cristina Goldt wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition.
Rallyteam, which was founded in 2013, and launched at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco in September 2014, helps employees find interesting internal projects that might otherwise get outsourced. “I knew there were opportunities that existed [internally] because as a manager, I was constantly outsourcing projects even though I knew there had to be people in the company that could solve this problem,” Rallyteam’s Huan Ho told TechCrunch’s Frederic Lardinois at the launch. Rallyteam was a service designed to solve this issue.
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Last fall the company raised $8.6 million led by Norwest Ventures with participation from Storm Ventures, Cornerstone OnDemand and Wilson Sonsini.
Workday provides a SaaS platform for human resources and finance, so the Rallyteam approach fits nicely within the scope of the Workday business. This is the 10th acquisition for Workday and the second this year.
Chart: Crunchbase
Workday raised over $230 million before going public in 2012.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This time ’round we had Connie and Alex on hand with Brian Ascher, a longtime partner with Venrock down in Palo Alto, Calif. It was a surprisingly busy week, so we had our work cut out for us. Without further ado:
GitHub! The biggest story in tech this week was right up our alley: Microsoft bought the venture-backed GitHub for $7.5 billion, bringing a massive portion of the developer world under its auspices. Whether developers want passports to Redmond remains up for debate, but from a corporate perspective, Microsoft’s move has largely been well-received. The transaction also provided a huge bump for GitHub’s investors, including a16z.
Domo! Another tech company is fighting to go public, but this time there’s doubt it can pull it off. Domo’s numbers are the wrong side of rough, with the firm burning tectonic amounts of cash to grow quite modestly. If the firm manages to go public, and soon, it may struggle to stay alive.
Scooters! As per usual, there’s new money flowing into the scooter niche. (Note: Domo is looking to tap the public markets at a time when scooter companies can raise $450 million in two rounds. Ouch.) We try to find out if Bird and Lime are worth the change, as well as why do they need so much cash. We also touched on the broader crowded non-car, on-demand transit space.
Dataminr! Sticking to the mega-round theme, Dataminr’s huge raise was perfectly timed for this episode, as our guest’s firm has money in the company. Indeed, with $221 million more in its pocket, Dataminr — which makes sense of online chaos for its customers — has an epic bankroll from which to bet.
Here’s a fun question: What will Equity sound like when the market turns and we cover the slowing of venture and the compression of valuations instead of venture acceleration and towering new post-money figures? All we know today is that the venture world is investing like that reality is far-off. We’ll see.
Hit play, and we’ll be right back.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
It’s the end of an era for Yahoo Messenger, one of the first instant messaging apps on the market that introd. Today, Oath (which also owns TechCrunch) announced that it would be winding down the service on July 17 as it continues to experiment and consider how and if it can have a relevant place in the messaging landscape amid huge domination from Facebook and others in mobile apps.
“There currently isn’t a replacement product available for Yahoo Messenger,” the company writes. “We’re constantly experimenting with new services and apps, one of which is an invite-only group messaging app called Yahoo Squirrel (currently in beta).” Squirrel is a group messaging app Yahoo started testing last month. You can request access to the beta here.
Yahoo has not broken out active users of Messenger for some time, and theoretically anyone logged into any Yahoo property is logged into Messenger. Cumulatively over the last 20 years, hundreds of millions of people have used the service, the company said. The company says your Yahoo ID remains intact for other services like Mail and fantasy sports.
The company is not specific about its reasons for shutting down Messenger, but the writing has been on the wall for some time, given the dominance today of Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger, Snapchat, WeChat and a number of others. Notably, Oath also shut down AIM, AOL’s equivalent messaging app, in October.
“We know we have many loyal fans who have used Yahoo Messenger since its beginning as one of the first chat apps of its kind,” it notes. “As the communications landscape continues to change over, we’re focusing on building and introducing new, exciting communications tools that better fit consumer needs.”
Alongside that, the company, as a part of Oath, is now owned by Verizon, the telecoms behemoth. Ironically, it’s the telcos of the world whose revenues have been cannibalised in part by over-the-top messaging services, although Yahoo Messenger’s demise is far likely less related to that, considering that it is not one of the most popular services on the market today.
Yahoo says that you can download your chat history on Messenger for the next six months by going here. Files go to your computer or device — but not specifically to another messaging app.
Yahoo Messenger first made its debut as Yahoo Pager way back in 1998, at a time when instant messaging was the terrain of PCs, as an alternative to email and SMS on basic mobile devices. It was an early hit and popularised the idea of “over the top” messaging that was not tied to a specific service provider.
But like other services in that first generation of messaging, Messenger’s role and functions were swiftly surpassed by faster and more functional mobile-based services, and specifically mobile messaging apps. Notably, WhatsApp was created by ex-Yahoo employees.
In the years since, Yahoo has had moderate (but far from blockbuster) success with Yahoo Messenger on mobile, which today ranks at 160 on iOS and 117 on Android in the social networking category, according to App Annie. Other attempts at building new messaging products have been short-lived.
Oath, and its owner Verizon, are clearly in the midst of a big shift organizationally and strategically. The company today also announced that Lowell McAdam would be stepping down as CEO of Verizon, to be replaced by Hans Vestberg, the Ericsson ex-CEO who has up to now been Verizon’s CTO. Last week, Oath announced its latest leadership change, hiring Natalie Ravitz as its new communications head.
It’s also gearing up for a big video and content overhaul later this year, which could also be one of the reasons behind today’s Messenger news. Under new owner Verizon, Oath and its businesses are gradually shifting away from communications services to focus more on what’s being whizzed around those networks.
Verizon today announced CEO Lowell McAdam is stepping down from his post as August 1, 2018, seven years to the day he took the spot. He will stay on as Executive Chairman of the Board through the end of 2018 and as Non-Executive Chairman thereafter.
Hans Vestberg, Chief Technology Officer of Verizon as well as Executive Vice President and President of Global Networks (that’s a long title), will take over as the Chief Executive Officer of the telecom giant who also owns Oath and therefore TechCrunch.
McAdam has lead Verizon as its CEO since August 1, 2011 and Chairman on January 1, 2012.
Vestberg is relatively new at Verizon. He joined the company a year ago. He was previously the chief executive of Ericsson until he was ousted in July 2016 when he proved ineffective in turning the company around.
Vestberg spent most of his career working for Ericsson. From 1998 to the end of 2009, Vestberg has mostly been the Chief Financial Officer of various Ericsson divisions around the world. He was Ericsson’s CEO from 2010 to 2016. For many years, Ericsson was a key player when it comes to telecommunications infrastructure and equipment. But the company had to face competition from Huawei which led to disappointing performances.
He’ll have a different task at Verizon. Verizon is currently riding high as one of the top telecoms in the United States but is eager to find new growth opportunities while transitioning to 5G networks.
I have something I’d like to share with you. I’ve been with our company and its predecessors for 35 years, and your Chairman and CEO for the past seven. Today, marks the beginning of an important series of events for Verizon. We are announcing that Hans Vestberg will succeed me as the Chief Executive Officer on August 1st. I will serve as Executive Chairman of the Board through the end of the year, and then continue as Chairman of the Board in a non-Executive capacity starting in 2019.
This is an exciting period for Verizon, and I believe there is no better time for this transition than now. It is my pleasure to hand the reins over to Hans. Hans is a recognized executive in the telecommunications and technology industries, and since joining Verizon in early 2017 he has demonstrated his ability to innovate and execute. I know that he has the right expertise, experience and business acumen to lead us forward and build on our strategy. Importantly, Hans is an inspiring leader, with high energy and a passion for delivering on the core values that truly make Verizon the world leader it is today.
When I look back at the milestones throughout my career, the one that stands out most is Verizon’s transformation into a world-class technology company. Today, Verizon is one of the world’s leading providers of communications, information and entertainment products and services to consumers, businesses and governmental agencies. Our goal has always been to improve lives through innovation. As I think about the power of 5G, I am convinced that this is a significant and pivotal time for Verizon and our entire industry – and now is the time to bring Verizon into its next chapter.
It has truly been a pleasure and a privilege to lead this great company. I am incredibly proud of what we have accomplished together. I look forward to continuing to play a part in its future as Executive Chairman of the Board, and I have tremendous confidence in where Verizon is headed with your support and Hans’s leadership.
Thank you for your dedication to Verizon. And never forget, there’s always a higher gear.
Ant Financial, the financial services affiliate connected to Alibaba which operates the Alipay mobile payment service, has confirmed that it has closed a Series C funding round that totals an enormous $14 billion.
The rumors have been flying about this huge financing deal for the past month or so, with multiple publications reporting that Ant — which has been strongly linked with an IPO — was in the market to raise at least $9 billion at a valuation of upwards of $100 billion. That turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg here.
The money comes via a tranche of U.S. dollar financing and Chinese RMB from local investors. Those names include Singapore-based sovereign funds GIC and Temasek, Malaysian sovereign fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Warburg Pincus, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Silver Lake and General Atlantic.
Ant said that the money will go towards extending its global expansion (and deepening its presence in non-China markets it has already entered), developing technology and hiring.
“We are pleased to welcome these investors as partners, who share our vision and mission, to embark on our journey to further promote inclusive finance globally and bring equal opportunities to the world. We are proud of, and inspired by, the transformation we have affected in the lives of ordinary people and small businesses over the past 14 years,” Ant Financial CEO and executive chairman Eric Jing said in a statement.
Ant has long been tipped to go public. Back in 2016 when it raised a then blockbuster $4.5 billion — little did we know it would pull in many multiples more — the company has been reportedly considering a public listing, but it instead opted to raise new capital at a valuation of $60 billion.
It looks like the same again, but with higher stakes. This new Series C round pushes that valuation up to $100 billion, according to Bloomberg. (Ant didn’t comment on its valuation.) So what has Ant done over the past two years to justify that jump?
It has long been a key fintech company in China, where it claims to serve offer 500 million consumers and offers Alipay, digital banking and investment services, but it has begun to replicate that business overseas in recent years. In particular, it has made investments and set up joint-ventures and new businesses in a slew of Asian countries that include India, Thailand, Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Despite that U.S. deal setback, Ant said today that its global footprint extends to 870 million consumers. I’d take that with a pinch of salt at this point since its business outside of China is in its early stages, but there seems little doubt that it is on the road to replicating its scale in its homeland in many parts of Asia. Raising this huge round only solidifies those plans by providing the kind of capital infusion that tops most of the world’s IPOs in one fell swoop.
It’s June, so that means it’s time to spend some quality time in downtown Los Angeles. E3 doesn’t actually begin in earnest until next Tuesday, but much of the big news will actually drop over the weekend, during press conferences from Microsoft, EA and Bethesda.
Starting Saturday, the video game news will be arriving fast and furious. We’ll be on the ground at the Staples Center to cover all things E3, but in the meantime, here’s a breakdown of what we expect to see at one of the gaming world’s biggest events.
Microsoft
Microsoft’s press conference is the first of the big three. The bad news: The company just confirmed a recent report that Crackdown 3 has been delayed until February. Bummer. Bad news for those aching to get their hands on the open-world action-adventure, but the title will almost certainly get some love during the event, regardless. After all, Microsoft has been talking up the title since way back in 2014.
It wouldn’t be a proper Microsoft E3 event without a Halo title of some kind. Halo 6 seems like a possibility — if not a certainty. The latest rumor has the upcoming game titled Halo Infinity, which may or may not be the first direct follow-up to 2015’s lukewarmly received Halo 5: Guardians.
New Gears of War and Forza titles have also been rumored for the big show.
Microsoft’s event kicks off at 1PM PT on Sunday.
Nintendo
One thing we know for sure: ASuper Smash Bros. title is coming to the Switch. Based on Nintendo’s recent habit of focusing on a key game at E3, it seems a safe bet that the beloved fighting game will get the lion’s share of the company’s attention.
Metroid Prime 4 and Yoshi seem like no-brainers for the big event, along with recently announced Pokémon titles Let’s Go, Pikachu and Let’s Go, Eevee. Oh, and did someone say Fortnite for the Switch? The rumor mill has also suggested a Star Fox racing title and even an N64 Classic Edition.
Nintendo is set to open the show at 9AM PT on Tuesday with a pre-recorded presentation.
Sony
Sony has already curbed speculation by announcing to the gaming world that there will be no hardware news at this year’s event. That said, there’s still going to be plenty of software firepower.
Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding has been appearing at these shows since way back in 2016. Even so, the game remains something of a mystery. Expect to see a fair bit more next week, as the title becomes something of a tentpole for Sony’s presentation. Kojima has certainly been talking it up on social media, including, compellingly, a tribute to late Joy Division frontman, Ian Curtis.
After debuting it at last year’s show, Sony has confirmed that Last of Us Part II will be making another appearance at E3. The eagerly awaited sequel appears to be largely focused on Ellie’s quest for revenge.
With a slated September release, Marvel’s Spider-Man also seems like a no-brainer for some serious stage time. Peter Parker will return as the webslinger this time out, and there will be a number of notable cameos for Spider-Fans, including Miles Morales and Mary Jane Watson, who will serve as a playable character.
Bad Robot, the media production company headed by famed nostalgia-lord J.J. Abrams, is expanding into the games industry with help from Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent. The company will lend its expertise in film to partner developers at both the indie and AAA level.
“I’m a massive games fan, and increasingly envious of the amazing tools developers get to work with, and the worlds they get to play in,” explained Abrams in the partnership’s announcement. “Now we are doubling down on our commitment to the space with a unique co-development approach to game making that allows us to focus on what we do best, and hopefully be a meaningful multiplier to our developer partners.”
Designers, visual artists and writers from Bad Robot will collaborate with developers, aiming at all game markets: PC, console and mobile.
Tencent will presumably provide funding and clout, in exchange for commercial rights to distribution of resulting titles. That probably limits the new company from doing what Abrams is perhaps most famous for, rejuvenating aging franchises with a modern aesthetic and a great deal of lens flare. Many popular AAA franchises — think Call of Duty and Uncharted — are deeply tied to publishers in multi-year or perpetual exclusivity arrangements.
Abrams himself won’t be the head of the new endeavor; the reins will instead belong to Dave Baranoff, who has done the gaming and interactive content for Bad Robot for the last decade. This isn’t his first foray into the “real” games industry — he and Bad Robot are currently working with Epic and ChAIR on a mysterious title called Spyjinx. But it is presumably the start of something rather bigger than a one-off partnership or movie promotion.
Tim Keenan, who created the amazing Duskers, will be the creative director, which is a good sign.
No further announcements, such as a first project or development partner, were made — just the formation of the company. We may hear more during E3, though, so stay tuned.
“‘You Are Now Connected On Messenger’ Is The Worst Thing On Facebook’ Buzzfeed’s Katie Notopoulos correctly pointed out in a story yesterday. When you friend someone on Facebook or Messenger, or an old friend joins Messenger, you often get one of these annoying notifications. They fool you into thinking someone actually wants to chat with you while burying your real message threads.
Luckily, it turns out Facebook was already feeling guilty about this shameless growth hack. When I asked why, amidst its big push around Time Well Spent, it was sending these alerts, the company told me it’s already in the process of scaling them back.
A Facebook spokesperson gave TechCrunch this statement:
We’ve found that many people have appreciated getting a notification when a friend joins Messenger. That said, we are working to make these notifications even more useful by employing machine learning to send fewer of them over time to people who enjoy getting them less. We appreciate all and any feedback that people send our way, so please keep it coming because it helps us make the product better.
So basically, if Messenger notices you never open those spammy alerts to start a chat thread, it will skip sending some of them.
Personally, I think these alerts should only be sent when users connect on Messenger specifically, which you can do with non-friends outside of Facebook. The company forced everyone to switch from Facebook Chat to Messenger years ago, but some people are only now relenting and actually downloading the app. I don’t think that should ever generate these alerts, since they have nothing to do with your own actions. Similarly, if I confirm a Facebook friend request from someone else, I know I’m now connected on Messenger too so no need to pester me with a notification.
But for now, if you hate these alerts, be sure not to open them so you send a signal to Facebook that you don’t want more. If we can properly shame tech giants for the specifics of their most intrusive and distracting behavior, rather than just griping more vaguely about over use, we may be able to make swifter progress towards them respecting our attention.
Tokyo-headquartered Rakuten, Japan’s answer to Amazon, is acquiring the Silicon Valley mobile ordering and pickup startup Curbside, the companies announced today. Terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed, but Curbside had previously raised between $40 million and $50 million from investors including CVS, Index Ventures, Sutter Hull Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Chicago Ventures, and others.
Founded in 2013 by former Apple engineers with backgrounds in location-based technology, Curbside was one of the early startups to capitalize on the idea that e-commerce’s expansion won’t entirely involve ship-to-home deliveries, but could also include the convenience of online ordering with a curbside pickup option at bricks-and-mortar retailers to speed things up.
The company first launched its own mobile shopping app with a limited set of partners, including a shopping center in San Jose and a handful of San Francisco Bay area Target stores. The Target test wrapped up some time ago, and Target instead launched its own Drive Up curbside pickup this year – possibly encouraged by the potential it saw through its tests with the third party.
Curbside then went on to power mobile orders and store pickup for CVS, which invested in the company as a strategic partner back in 2016.
The startup also developed an SDK for mobile app developers called ARRIVE that allows retailers to see when customers are arriving at their location for things like order pickup, mobile order ahead, and appointment checkin. CVS, Sephora, Chipotle, Nordstrom, Pizza Hut, Chevron, Boston Market, Westfield, HEB, and Yelp are listed on the Curbside website as ARRIVE customers.
For strategic partner CVS in particular, Curbside is available at thousands of locations across the U.S. for order ahead and pickup.
ARRIVE has since become the primary business for Curbside, and now contributes to the majority of its revenue. Curbside CEO Jaron Waldman says half of the top ten QSR’s (quick serve restaurants) are now using ARRIVE, as the restaurant side of the ARRIVE business has really taken off. These operations will continue as planned, Curbside says.
Across its customer base, Curbside has powered several million curbside pickups to date, and has over 8,000 U.S. locations, as well as some traction in non-U.S. markets, including Canada and India (Pizza Hut).
As for Rakuten, the acquisition opens up a lot of opportunities in terms of connecting retailers and merchants with customers, particularly in order ahead and pickup.
“There’s a shift happening in consumer behavior where people want to save time. They want to order ahead on their mobile device and have things ready when they get there – whether that’s in the store or curbside in front of the store,” explains Waldman. “ARRIVE works really well in both use cases…And we’re also helping [retailers] really measure the performance of the individual store,” he says. “The folks that have that physical world touch point needs to ensure that stores are performing the consumers are actually not waiting that long.”
Rakuten today reaches over 1 billion members worldwide, including those on its own Rakuten Ichiba online marketplace in Japan.
Those online merchants could potentially take advantage of the Curbside technology to offer the option of order pickup for their customers, alongside their existing delivery options.
These sorts of integrations may not be limited only to the marketplace itself, however. Rakuten also has other consumer touch points, like communications app Viber and eBates.com, where Curbside could also reach the consumer audience in various ways. And it has investments in companies like Pinterest, Lyft, Cabify, and others, where it could do the same. It also has a partnership with Walmart in Japan in online grocery, where Curbside pickup could get involved.
In fact, Waldman says there are at least half a dozen opportunities inside Rakuten it could now pursue. The question is really which ones will it go after first.
“I can say there’s a ton of interest to bring this technology to Japan,” he notes. “They already touch 100 million consumers in Japan – their registered users. We could hook up this really big ecosystem of consumers and merchants,” adds Waldman.
He’s also excited to broaden the Curbside offering thanks to Rakuten’s expanded resources.
“We don’t have an out of the box payment solution. There’s a lot lot in the Rakuten ecosystem that’s going to allow us to to broaden that offering, which means that we can add more value for for our merchants and our retail partners,” he says.
And as a part of Rakuten, Curbside can more quickly expand to global markets – something it had just begun doing with smaller launches in Canada and India.
“Rakuten was founded on the philosophy of empowering merchants to reach consumers in new ways. In 1997 it was selling on the internet. Today it’s mobile commerce. Curbside has a unique ability to surprise and delight consumers with fun and convenient ways to shop while empowering local merchants,” says Yaz Iida, President of Rakuten USA. “It fits into our unique philosophy and will be a piece of Rakuten’s ecosystem of internet services.”
Curbside’s 60-person team, for the time being, will remain in its Palo Alto offices, though it may later move to Rakuten’s offices in San Mateo. Waldman remain as Rakuten Curbside CEO.
The startup had raised between $40 million and $50 million, including its undisclosed investment by CVS in 2016. Before that, it had raised $34.5 million, according to Crunchbase.
Accessibility has long played an integral role at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, and it certainly had its presence felt in 2018. There are some constant elements of the week, such as the labs, sessions, and mid-week social that brings together members of Apple’s Accessibility group, developers and others interested in the disabled community to celebrate inclusiveness and accessible design.
This year had a different vibe. After attending the keynote and speaking with numerous people at Apple during the week, one feeling that has resonated with me is that accessibility, conceptually, has become a mandatory part of not only how Apple designs its products, but of the Apple ecosystem at large. To be mindful of accessibility is now, more than ever, an expectation.
Several student scholarship winners I spoke to eagerly expressed their desire to learn more about what accessibility is, how it works and how to best incorporate it into their apps. They truly want to build tools for everyone.
The announcements made this year were less about discrete features for accessibility’s sake and more about how the new features, as Apple designed them, are inherently accessible. The Apple Design Awards, for instance, has included an accessibility category the last few years, but not so this year. In fact, accessibility has always been part of the criteria for selecting winners, and Apple says this year’s winners have support for accessibility built in. Calzy, a calculator app from indie developer Raja Vijayaraman, supports Dynamic Type.
Accessible announcements
As a disabled reporter who has covered the last several Apple media events, I’ve attended enough now that I’ve come to realize there is an interesting (to me) accessibility angle to how the company structures its events and how it supports attendees with disabilities. That is another story for another time, but I found myself thinking about it during Monday’s keynote address.
I’ve been to several Apple events. These slides are the most visually accessible I’ve ever seen.
The slides Apple showed were the most readable I’ve seen yet. As someone who has low vision, this is critically important. The white, bold San Francisco typeface set against the black background made for such high contrast that I had no problems seeing every slide — even the word-cloud ones listing ancillary features. This made my job covering the news easier, because I wasn’t straining my eyes in order to get important information.
Accessibility-wise, Monday’s keynote slides were infinitely more visually friendly than the ones used at the March event in Chicago. As pretty and appropriately themed as they were, I found those slides difficult to see; I liked WWDC’s much better.
The lesson here is in how pervasive and dynamic accessibility can be. Accessibility is everywhere, and the relevance in this case is that it extends way beyond any new software features.
Accessibility for everyone
There are a handful of new mainstream features across Apple’s platforms that the company feels has great potential in an accessibility context. This epitomizes the idea of accessibility for everyone—software not built expressly for accessibility, but designed in such a way that users of all abilities can benefit.
One such feature is Group FaceTime in iOS 12. Apple famously included deaf users in an iPhone 4 commercial many moons ago, and FaceTime has remained a popular method of communication for many users in the deaf community.
Whereas previously the feature was essentially a one-on-one conversation, the arrival of iOS 12 this fall will make it possible to converse with up to 32(!) people at once. For the deaf and hard-of-hearing, the ability to include one’s entire family (or friends or co-workers) should make FaceTime an even more compelling technology for deaf users.
Another example is the Walkie-Talkie mode in watchOS 5. I’ve seen chatter on Twitter that it seems like a frivolous addition, but in actuality it can be practical.
Imagine you’re someone who’s a caregiver for a person with severe physical impairments (or simply elderly) and both of you have an Apple Watch. With Walkie-Talkie, you can “radio” each other from separate locations in a home or care facility right from your wrists. No need to iMessage or make a phone call or ring a bedside call button. All you need is your Apple Watch and the Walkie-Talkie mode.
Lastly, Siri Shortcuts. While Apple’s marketing materials are pitching Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12 as a time-saving, convenient way to get things done, there also are key accessibility ramifications as well.
The ability to, for instance, order coffee at Starbucks or Philz without needing to remember to do it—or, crucially, how to do it in an app—can be streamlined with Siri Shortcuts. This has major implications for alleviating cognitive load and stress (in addition to being a time-saver), and has enormous potential to positively impact executive function for users who have certain cognitive delays.
But it’s more than just cognition; the automation that Siri Shortcuts provides can also benefit those with limited fine-motor skills, who may struggle with the rigor of multiple taps and swipes.
In addition to the features above, there is a host of others whose accessibility promise excites Apple. The new dark mode in macOS Mojave, for example, boosts contrast considerably, which should help Mac users see better and guard against eye fatigue or screen glare.
AirPods with Live Listen
There was one notable hardware-specific feature not announced during the keynote. As I reported this week, Live Listen — a feature previously only available to compatible Made for iPhone hearing aids — is coming to AirPods with the release of iOS 12.
The addition of Live Listen is noteworthy because it will allow someone with limited hearing to better hear speakers in noisy environments or from across a room. This functionality isn’t meant as a full replacement for a professional-grade hearing aid, but it certainly is a huge deal for the hard-of-hearing who want to use AirPods. Now they can use Live Listen to hear better without having to spend additional money on dedicated hardware.
Apple says Live Listen is included in the first developer beta of iOS 12, so anyone curious about it can test it out now.
Miscellany
Unlike past years, there aren’t any all-new discrete accessibility features across Apple’s platforms this year. This follows with the theme that accessibility is interwoven into the banner features Apple is promoting in their marketing copy.
Nonetheless, there is a smattering of enhancements across Apple’s platforms that are worth mentioning. Notable ones include the ability to use the Siri voice on iOS as the voice for Speak Selection, where you highlight a body of text and have Siri read it aloud. The Siri voice is now set as the default.
Another enhancement, pertaining to the Smart Annotations feature announced for iWork in March, is OCR support for handwritten notes, which will read them aloud. Blind and low vision users can now hear text markup in documents if they can’t see it.
Finally, the Touch Bar. VoiceOver users with Touch Bar MacBook Pros now have the ability to create custom automator scripts right from the Touch Bar with VoiceOver turned on.
The work Apple has put into making accessibility a focal point of the conference the last few years is bearing serious fruit this time around. Developers heard the message.
