I have a special guest this time around,

and I'll let him introduce himself.

Tell them a little bit about what you do, who you are.

Take it away.

- My name is Tim, and I work here at Apple.

And I have the privilege of working

with some of the most incredible people in the world,

and there's not a day that goes by

that I'm not thankful for it.

- So, thank you.

And, so I just wanted to have a conversation with you

on a couple of topics, but really,

it's the month of Global Accessibility Awareness Day

and just being around, we're here at Apple Campus

and there's, I see signage,

I see just the awareness being spread

amongst the culture here.

- [Tim] Yeah

- And so, tell me a little bit about,

as an Apple user myself, in all the platforms,

I just want to know, why does Apple

take the time to invest in research and accessibility?

What's the return?

What does Apple get from that?

- Yeah, it's a good question.

I've been asked that before by a few people.

For us, we believe very deeply that

accessibility's a human right.

And we try very hard to make all of our products

accessible for everyone because of that.

And so it's a basic value.

Think back to how Apple was founded,

and it's still the case today,

we make tools for people to do incredible things

and change the world with them.

And that's everybody, not a particular group of people.

We want everybody to be able to use our products

that would like to, and so we actually

don't look at this as a return.

I've never, ever, in the 20 years of being at Apple,

ever looked at a, what's our return on investment here.

My guess is there's not one

in the traditional sense of measuring that,

but we don't care because this is one of those things

that fit in the just and right category,

and it wouldn't be Apple without doing this.

This is just, it's a part of our values

that we will not compromise at all.

- And has this been like a value since your leadership,

or even going back a bit, 'cause I just remember

being able to start up a Mac decades ago,

it would talk to you, so even a blind person

like myself who, even someone who has less sight than I do,

they would be able to start up a Mac with no assistance.

- Yeah, it's been the values since day one.

It's not something that I brought in

or that anyone here today created in the last several years.

We try very hard to push it forward

and continue thinking broader and broader

about what accessibility means,

but it's really been here from the beginning.

I mean, you think about it, one of the things Steve

wanted to do early on being at Apple was

to put a Mac in every classroom, right?

That's a form of accessibility

of democratizing technology so that everybody,

not just the big rich corporations or the institutions,

could have technology but everyone would.

And so that basic thought of democratizing things

so everyone can create whatever they would like to create,

or solve whatever problem they would like to solve,

that's what we're about, that's why we're here.

And it's been that way for over 40 years.

- That's it.

So being someone who uses a lot of accessibility features,

I use Zoom, VoiceOver in the morning

when my eyes are more or not ready for the day.

I tend to use speech selection, display adjustments,

and all that.

Have you ever found yourself ever using

any of the accessibility features

for yourself and if so, how?

- Yeah, absolutely, I use Night Shift all the time.

Occasionally, I use things to change the contrast

because sometimes I have a difficulty with certain colors.

I use HomeKit many, many times a day.

You're absolutely right, there's so many features

that may have been done for one reason

but are applicable for many reasons.

Yeah, I find those to be incredibly useful for me

and I hope everyone does.

- On the topic of HomeKit, it's definitely something

that's been around for a little while now,

but it's definitely picking up more traction,

I've been seeing - It is, yeah.

- In recent months, this year,

and what do you find is very beneficial about HomeKit,

and what do you want people to know about it.

- The thing, to me, it goes back to democratizing the,

it's that home automation was for the rich

and the powerful, right?

And what we wanted to do was democratize it

and make it for everyone,

and so we built it into our

mobile operating system, iOS.

And that is what has been the sort of the tipping point

to get more people to hook up more devices on HomeKit.

And so I use it every day.

It's how I open the garage door.

It's how I open doors.

It's how I turn on and off lights.

I set scenes with it.

This morning, I turned on the fireplace

because it was chilly in the house,

and I did that with my voice.

And so there's just a whole variety

of things that I use it for,

and I think we're just on the surface right now

as to what can be done.

There are lots of, you know,

innovation that will continue to flow here.

And so it's an area I'm really excited about,

and I love the fact that, again,

when you really think through it,

there's so many accessibility features there.

And we really thought through those

and really thought through the security

and the privacy aspect of this as well,

which are so important.

This is not a place for the Wild, Wild West to take off

because you really want to authenticate the user

in, you know, in a private and secure manner.

- Absolutely.

And so being integrated into the OS,

being well kind of rooted in that,

with everything else being VoiceOver, Switch Control,

this enables people who maybe couldn't even

reach the light switch, or couldn't find the light switch.

- That's right.

- And they can either just do it automated

just from their phone or

tell me how Siri's integrated into HomeKit.

- Yeah, this will be, I think, over time

one of the largest uses of Siri over time.

So I actually don't use the Home app to control my house,

I use Siri, completely, 100%.

- Wow.

- And so when I get up in the morning,

I have the Good Morning scene set up.

And that triggers a whole set of things in the house.

When I approach the house in the evening,

and hit the geofence that I've set up,

a certain number of things,

from the thermostat to the garage door

and all of these kind of things happen as well.

And then what I also love to do is,

because I like to read at night,

and I'm super sensitive from a sleep point of view

and what I'm doing the last one to two hours of the evening,

so I like to set the lights at a certain kind of point.

And so all of these things with HomeKit

are just simple, are really simple.

I couldn't be more excited about it.

I'm so glad that we are democratizing it

so, for anybody, they can see themselves with this.

They might just want one device, you know,

or they may want to do something,

multiple devices in every room.

People have that choice and we try to make it really simple.

- What exactly, 'cause you mention scenes,

tell me what a scene is.

- A scene is where, let's say,

for something that you do every day,

like get up in the morning.

Maybe in the morning when you get up,

think about the things you do now.

You might open the shade.

You might start your coffee.

You might turn on a series of lights.

You might increase the temperature of the thermostat.

If you think through all of the things that you do,

it's likely that all of those can be done

with just saying, "Hey, Siri, good morning."

- It's incredible.

- And all of those things happen at once.

The same thing happens at night when you get home.

You think about the things that you do.

You might raise your garage door.

You might unlock your door.

You might turn on certain lights in the house.

All of these things can be done by just hitting the geofence

or a voice command, if you want to use

a voice command in that way.

And so it's really delightful, you know,

when all of those things just happen.

And there are devices now, I mean they're still rolling out

and so forth, but I'm really excited to where this is going.

And I think everyone can see themselves in this,

whether they are looking at it from a security angle,

or looking at it from more of a lifestyle kind of angle.

It's so exciting that people that are struggling

with doing some of the things I just said, right?

The light switch is in the wrong place.

They can't raise the shade.

All of these things that may have been difficult to do,

now with their voice, they can do it.

- That's honestly incredible to hear.

- It's powerful, yeah, it is really powerful.

- It really empowers people, I think.

- [Tim] It does.

- Makes them feel more independent.

- It does and you know, we built a house over here

in our lobby to sort of show this to our teams

and people that we're having in this week

because we know that by inspiring people

about what can happen today,

they'll think about things that no one's thought about yet.

And, you know, that will be another round

of products and improvements.

- Thank you, Tim, so much.

I really appreciate sitting down

and having some coffee with you

and talking through some of these new incredible things

that Apple, you know, not even new things,

but things that Apple's been doing for decades now.

- Thank you - [James] Thank you so much

- It's really great to meet you.

- Me too. - Yeah, it's a pleasure.

- If you guys want to see more information

about HomeKit or Apple accessibility,

there'll be links down below.

And make sure you follow them and do all that.

Cool! - Very cool.