Blind Developers

This directory lists 39 developers who are blind or have low vision, along with software each has built. It is meant as a resource for aspiring blind developers and as a way to find and reach the developers listed.

This is one of three companion directories, alongside Blind Authors and Blind Presenters, and all three are merged in Blind Creators. A related directory, Blind Apps, turns this one around: it lists every qualifying app by these developers, each with its platform, its technology, and any AI involved, plus statistics on the whole collection.

Each listed app belongs to its developer and keeps its own license. This directory’s own text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

A developer is included here when every one of the following is true:

The developer is blind or has low vision.
They created or led the development of the app or tool. Software built by a team counts when the developer was a creator or a development lead; everyone listed has at least one app of their own.
The app or tool is reachable today through a working link to where it can be obtained and used.
It has been actively developed or maintained in the year 2020 or later. Long-running tools such as JAWS, NVDA, and Emacspeak therefore appear alongside newer projects.

Up to three projects are shown per developer, while Blind Apps shows them all, and each developer’s entry ends with a “Profiles:” line — GitHub, LinkedIn, a website, or other relevant pages, listed alphabetically by label.

Developers are listed alphabetically by last name, with the projects grouped by platform in an appendix.

This directory is English-language in scope: it relies on documentation, code, and sources available in English. Blind developers who build and publish in other languages are not represented here.

Developers (alphabetical by last name):
Projects by Platform

Developers (Alphabetical by Last Name)

Tony Acosta

A creator in the Canary Islands, Spain, who teaches blind iPhone users through hundreds of Canal TifloAcosta videos and podcast episodes. Profiles: GitHub, Podcast, YouTube.

TifloAcosta App

A free web app in Spanish and English, installable on iPhone, Android, and Windows with no registration, that gathers a growing library of guides, courses, news, and his video catalog, with search and navigation designed for screen reader users. Its source is on GitHub.

Nicholas Adams

A severely sight impaired developer who created a tool to type Universal English Braille on a standard keyboard, with no specialised hardware required. Profiles: Documentation.

BrailleKeyboard

A Windows app that turns a standard keyboard into a UEB braille keyboard: the F, D, and S keys and the J, K, and L keys map to the six braille dots, and each chord generates ordinary text anywhere in the operating system. It supports contractions and custom wordsign dictionaries.

Taylor Arndt

Developer and Chief Operating Officer at Techopolis who builds Swift and web apps with accessibility designed in from the start, and co-leads the Accessibility Agents project for AI coding tools with Jeff Bishop. Profiles: LinkedIn, Website.

Start Testing

A fully accessible project management platform for organizations, covering projects, tasks, bugs, features, milestones, reviews, releases, and client collaboration, that keyboard and screen reader users can work in throughout; she built it at Techopolis.

Swift Agents

Sixteen specialized Swift agents for Claude Code and GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code, published by Techopolis, that enforce Swift 6.2 concurrency, SwiftUI, Foundation Models, VoiceOver accessibility, security, and App Store compliance; free and MIT-licensed, with a one-command install. Formerly named swift-agent-team.

wx-accessible-webview

A wxPython library, installable with pip install wx-accessible-webview, that makes embedded web views report correctly to screen readers such as JAWS and NVDA, solving a long-standing accessibility gap for blind developers building Python desktop apps. Also published on PyPI.

Jeff Bishop

President of Blind Information Technology Solutions (BITS) and an IT accessibility consultant at the University of Arizona, who co-leads the Accessibility Agents project for AI coding tools with Taylor Arndt. Profiles: BITS, Community Access.

GLOW Accessibility Toolkit

A BITS accessibility toolkit that audits, fixes, and templates Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Markdown, PDF, and ePub documents to meet accessibility guidelines.

Quill

A free, screen-reader-first writing and document environment for Windows and macOS, co-created with Taylor Arndt, that reads and writes nearly every document format, from Word, EPUB and PDF to braille files and DAISY talking books, with a spoken-echo history, Reveal Codes, and optional AI through a local model; a community module is adding equations that a screen reader user can explore term by term.

Quill Radio

A free, standalone, screen-reader-first internet radio app for Windows and the successor to the ACB Radio Tuner: it plays every ACB Media stream out of the box plus tens of thousands of stations worldwide, with nested favorites, recording that survives a dropped connection, a wake-up timer, and NOAA weather radio.

John Boyer

A software engineer from Minnesota who founded the nonprofit Computers to Help People and led the development of widely used open-source braille software until his death in 2023. Profiles: Wikipedia.

Liblouis

The open-source braille translator and back-translator, named for Louis Braille, that produces the braille output used by NVDA, Orca, and many commercial tools.

BrailleBlaster

A free, cross-platform application for transcribing print documents into well-formatted braille.

Tristen Breitenfeldt

A certified accessibility tester in Yakima, Washington, who writes about accessibility and universal design and has used a guide dog since 2006. Profiles: Website.

ART (Accessibility Reporting Tool)

An open-source, local-first workspace for documenting accessibility findings, managing standards such as WCAG 2.1 and 2.2, and exporting reports to Word, Excel, PDF, and HTML, built for full keyboard and screen reader use; she conceived and built it with AI-assisted development.

Matt Campbell

Co-founder and CTO of Pneuma Solutions who has built accessibility software since the late 1990s, including work on Windows Narrator. Profiles: GitHub, Mastodon.

AccessKit

A cross-platform Rust library that exposes accessibility APIs to UI toolkits on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Remote Incident Manager

An accessible cross-platform remote-support and remote-desktop tool for Windows and macOS.

Michael “Mick” Curran

The original creator of NVDA and co-founded NV Access to sustain it. Profiles: GitHub, NV Access.

NVDA

The free, open-source NonVisual Desktop Access screen reader for Windows, co-created with James Teh. Wikipedia: NVDA

Dash

A Poland-based developer who publishes small, keyboard-friendly Windows utilities as TD Programs, also written Piksel Dash, and belongs to the three-person Soft Programmers team. Profiles: Website.

TD Sound Manager

Opens the classic Windows audio panels, unmutes playback, and switches between sound cards with global hotkeys or a menu.

Mini Load

A lightweight downloader for media from popular platforms, built on yt-dlp and FFmpeg with a keyboard-friendly interface, rewritten in C# and updated in August 2026.

FM-DX Servers Lister

Lists public FM-DX radio receivers by country, with search, favourites, and status details, replacing a map that screen readers cannot use.

Michael Doise

iOS and macOS developer, creator of the Perspective suite of apps and the engineer behind the ACB Link app. Profiles: App Store, LinkedIn.

ACB Link

The American Council of the Blind’s official app for iOS and Android.

Perspective Intelligence

A private, on-device AI assistant for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that chats, transcribes audio, and recognizes text in images.

WayAround

A smartphone labeling app for iPhone, iPad, and Android whose mobile versions he develops: users tap reusable NFC WayTags to record and read back custom details about clothing, medications, food, and other everyday items.

Liam Erven

Self-employed audio-game designer and founder of LWorks, making accessible games since 2002. Profiles: LWorks, YouTube.

LWorks audio games

A catalog of fully accessible audio games, including LWorks Arcade, Pigeon Panic, Super Egg Hunt Plus, and a browser-based Super Liam 2 alpha.

Kelly Ford

Longtime accessibility leader who publishes accessible Windows utilities and Apple-platform tools. Profiles: GitHub, The Idea Place blog.

QuickMail

A screen-reader-friendly email client for Windows and IMAP servers, with conversations, flags, attachments, shared mailboxes, and an in-app bug reporter that needs no GitHub account; portable and installer builds, including ARM.

WeatherFast

A clutter-free iOS weather app built by and for VoiceOver users, with a “Weather Around Me” feature for tracking conditions in nearby cities and historical weather going back decades.

Image Description Toolkit

A batch image description tool that describes whole folders of images with a choice of vision models, local through Ollama or online through OpenAI, Claude or Apple Intelligence, and includes a chat client built for keyboard and screen reader use.

Bryan Garaventa

Accessibility engineer and W3C ARIA Working Group member, formerly an accessibility fellow at SSB BART Group and Level Access, who builds open-source JavaScript libraries for accessible dynamic web content. Profiles: LinkedIn, WhatSock, WhatSock on GitHub.

AccDC API

A JavaScript engine that renders dynamic web content with accessibility built in for screen-reader and keyboard users.

AccDC Technical Style Guide

A library of tested, accessible interface-widget patterns and practical ARIA design guidance.

Tony Gebhard

A totally blind musician and assistive technology instructor from Michigan who builds free, keyboard-first tools for screen reader users. Profiles: GitHub, LinkedIn, Website.

NVDA Coach

A free NVDA add-on, in the NVDA Add-on Store, that teaches screen reader commands from inside NVDA through 45 guided, hands-on lessons with spoken instructions, hints, and built-in practice forms and web pages; he built it as an assistive technology instructor for beginners and their teachers.

TG Drop Deck

A free, MIT-licensed soundboard and playout desk for podcasts, radio, and live shows on Windows and Mac, with eighty sounds on the number row, a crossfading playlist, a processed microphone, recording, and streaming, all built keyboard-first for screen reader users.

Quin Gillespie

Systems-level developer at Pneuma Solutions. Profiles: GitHub.

Paperback

A free, fast, fully accessible document and e-book reader for Windows, macOS and Linux, with paid Android and iOS editions, whose 1.0 release in October 2026 reads EPUB, PDF (with OCR of scanned pages), MOBI and AZW3, comic archives, M4B and MP3 audiobooks and many older formats, speaks MathML through MathCAT, and navigates by headings, pages, links and tables.

Codestats

A very fast command-line code-analysis tool that reports detailed statistics about a codebase across 544 programming languages, with prebuilt binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Glen Gordon

The original architect of the JAWS screen reader; previously a Software Fellow at Freedom Scientific.

JAWS

Job Access With Speech, the long-standing and widely used commercial Windows screen reader. Wikipedia: JAWS

Brian Hartgen

A blind UK JAWS scripter, trainer, and radio presenter who co-owns Hartgen Consultancy, runs the online station Team-FM, and was a founding member of Mushroom FM. Profiles: Bluesky, Team-FM, Website, X.

J-Say

Links JAWS with Dragon speech recognition so a blind person can control the computer, dictate, and hear text echoed back entirely by voice, with deep support for Word, Outlook, and web browsers.

Leasey

A suite of JAWS scripts that simplifies common Windows tasks for users of all experience levels.

Zoom Professional Scripts

JAWS scripts that make Zoom meetings easier to run and join, with sound cues for muted participants and raised hands and quick moves between the participants list and waiting room.

Meriç Karaca

The developer and founder of ZeroVisionLabs, who publishes free, VoiceOver-first iPhone apps for blind and low-vision users in more than a dozen languages. Profiles: App Store, Instagram, Website.

Zerogram

A free, independent Telegram client for iPhone built on Telegram’s official TDLib library and designed from the ground up for VoiceOver: a message reads as who, when, and what in one tap, voice messages announce their length, and play, pause, and seek are rotor actions.

zEdit

A fully accessible video and audio editor for iPhone and Android that trims, merges, reorders, and mixes clips and adds sound effects, filters, subtitles, and audio description, with every screen tested against VoiceOver; also on Google Play.

Doug Lee

Assistive-technology programmer known for a large catalog of JAWS scripts and cross-platform Python tools. Profiles: Website.

TTCom

A cross-platform, command-line TeamTalk client written in Python.

Joseph Lee

One of the most prolific authors of NVDA add-ons. Profiles: GitHub.

Add-on Updater

Keeps other NVDA add-ons up to date.

StationPlaylist

Gives NVDA users accessible control of StationPlaylist broadcasting software.

Windows App Essentials

Improves NVDA access to built-in Windows apps.

Andre “Onj” Louis

A blind musician, producer, and accessibility advocate from London who builds accessibility-first Windows tools; he was the first blind person to beta-test Native Instruments’ Komplete Kontrol accessibility features. Profiles: GitHub, Website

Sensor Readout

An accessibility-first hardware monitoring tool that reports a computer’s sensor readings, such as temperatures and fan speeds, to screen reader users.

Clipman

An accessible clipboard manager for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iPhone and iPad that keeps a searchable, organizable history for fast keyboard and screen reader use, with optional encrypted sync across devices.

Stephen Lovely

A developer in British Columbia, blind since birth, who builds AI visual-assistance tools through natural-language development rather than traditional coding. Profiles: AppleVis interview.

Vision AI Assistant

A progressive web app for iPhone and Android that lets users explore a photo by moving a finger across it, get brief live descriptions from the camera, track an object to walk toward it, and read signs and printed books, with optional voice commands; he builds it by describing features in plain language on the Base44 platform.

Tony Malykh

Software engineer who publishes a popular family of NVDA add-ons. Profiles: GitHub.

BrowserNav

Fast, structured navigation of web and document content in NVDA.

Tony’s Enhancements

A bundle of quality-of-life tweaks for NVDA.

Jamal Mazrui

Accessibility officer and developer who publishes accessibility and developer tooling, the Homer Development Kit his apps share, and books built for screen readers, including a 2026 guide to building apps nonvisually with AI. Profiles: GitHub, LinkedIn.

2htm

Converts Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and Markdown files into accessible HTML that preserves headings, lists, tables, and image alt text.

extCheck

Checks the accessibility of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Markdown files, writing per-file CSV reports of issues found by an extensible rule registry.

urlCheck

Drives Microsoft Edge through Playwright to run axe-core on each page, producing per-page reports plus a session-level Accessibility Conformance Report against all 86 WCAG 2.2 success criteria.

J.J. Meddaugh

A blind accessibility consultant and app developer, and owner of A. T. Guys, who designs and tests mobile and web apps with screen reader users in mind. Profiles: LinkedIn, Website

NFB 2026 Convention Web App

An accessible web app for attendees of the 2026 National Federation of the Blind national convention in Austin, Texas.

Tyler Merren

A blind personal trainer and five-time Paralympic goalball athlete who created an audio-first fitness app for blind and low-vision users. Profiles: LinkedIn

ReVision Fitness

An audio fitness program for iPhone and Android whose exercises, workouts, and equipment guides are described for blind and low-vision users with clock-face directions and step-by-step instructions; built with a Holman Prize.

Mark Morad

A developer who lost his sight as a university freshman, then taught himself to program with a screen reader and built an AI accessibility assistant now used by people in dozens of countries. Profiles: Website.

ScribeMe

An AI-powered accessibility assistant for iPhone and iPad that makes documents and images accessible, with OCR in more than fifty languages that labels headings, lists, and tables and generates alt text, plus a Live Assist mode that describes surroundings continuously in real time and works with Meta AI glasses.

Marc Mulcahy

Principal software development engineer at Amazon Lab126 who created the first working prototype of the Orca screen reader and co-founded LevelStar. Profiles: LinkedIn.

VoiceView

Amazon’s built-in screen reader for Fire tablets, Fire TV, and Echo Show smart displays.

Ken Perry

Senior software engineer at the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) and a volunteer programming instructor; a contributor to the Liblouis braille translation library (see Liblouis). Profiles: APH, LinkedIn.

Graphiti

A refreshable tactile graphics display he leads at APH, presenting braille and images on a pin array.

André Polykanine

Backend software engineer and accessibility specialist in Strasbourg, France, blind since birth; co-founder of Oire Software with his wife Nathalie, a longtime JAWS beta tester, and CTO of AccessMind, maker of the Optima braille laptop. Profiles: GitHub, Mastodon, Oire Software on GitHub.

SIC! (Simple Image Converter)

A Windows image converter with batch conversion across eight formats, resize and crop, multi-size icon creation, a command-line mode, and signed automatic updates.

Iridium

A PHP security library for encrypting data, hashing passwords, and managing secure tokens, installable via Composer.

PlanCake

A free Windows Markdown reader and annotating tool, released in October 2026 for reviewing the long plans written with AI coding tools: open a Markdown file, move by headings, lists, links and tables, press Enter to add a note that is stored inside the file itself, export the document to HTML and the notes to JSON, with no telemetry.

T. V. Raman

Computer scientist at Google and a pioneer of auditory user interfaces. Profiles: blog, GitHub, home page, Wikipedia.

Emacspeak

The “Complete Audio Desktop,” an actively maintained speech interface built on Emacs for Linux and other systems. Wikipedia: Emacspeak

Derek Riemer

Software engineer at Google who has written NVDA core code and a large set of add-ons. Profiles: GitHub, LinkedIn.

NVDA add-ons

Roughly two dozen NVDA add-ons plus contributions to NVDA core.

Saqib Shaikh

Microsoft software engineer who founded and leads the Seeing AI project. Profiles: LinkedIn.

Seeing AI

A free app that narrates the visual world for blind and low-vision users, on iOS and Android.

Tyler Spivey

Developer of remote-access and console screen-reading tools. Profiles: GitHub.

NVDA Remote

An add-on, co-created with Christopher Toth, for controlling a remote computer with NVDA; it was folded into NVDA core in 2025.

tdsr

A lightweight console screen reader for macOS and Linux terminals.

James “Jamie” Teh

Co-founder of NV Access and is now an accessibility tech lead at Mozilla. Profiles: GitHub.

NVDA (co-founder)

Co-created the NVDA screen reader; see the full entry under NVDA.

OSARA

Makes the REAPER digital-audio workstation accessible on Windows and macOS.

Carter Temm

Accessibility consultant and software developer focused on AI-assisted tooling. Profiles: GitHub.

AI Content Describer

An NVDA add-on that uses AI to describe images and on-screen content.

Christopher “Q” Toth

Founder of Accessible Apps / Q Software Solutions. Profiles: Accessible Apps, GitHub.

CAPTCHA Be Gone

A service and browser integration that solves CAPTCHAs accessibly.

NVDA Remote (co-created)

Co-created NVDA Remote; see the full entry under NVDA Remote.

QRead

An accessible Windows e-reader for documents and books.

Sam Tupy

C++ developer focused on accessible games and game tooling. Profiles: GitHub, Website.

NVGT

The NonVisual Gaming Toolkit, a cross-platform engine and scripting environment for building audio games.

Survive the Wild

A multiplayer survival audio game.

Quinton Williams

A totally blind developer who learned Swift by building real projects with AI tools such as Claude Code, studying the code as he goes, and published his first app in 2026. Profiles: AppleVis interview.

VAL: Voice, Alarm & Chimes

A customizable talking and chiming clock for iPhone and Mac, compatible with Steve’s Talking Clock files, with alarms scheduled through Apple’s AlarmKit so they get through Focus and silent mode; a paid app chosen as AppleVis AnonyMouse’s App Pick of the Month for May 2026.

Projects by Platform

Each project links back to its full entry above, ordered by title. Projects that span platforms appear in more than one group. For every app by these developers, grouped by platform, category, and developer, see Blind Apps.