Haben Girma

Apple Invites Haben to Speak at Their 50th Anniversary Celebration

Haben Girma, a woman with dancing hazel eyes, long black hair, medium dark skin, and wearing a blue and white dress, stands on stage speaking into a microphone. A round table in front of her holds a Braille display where her fingers gently read. Next to her, stretched out on the floor, rests a German Shepherd Seeing Eye dog. Behind them is a black screen with a rainbow Apple logo above the words, “50 Years of Thinking Different.”

Apple celebrated its fiftieth anniversary yesterday, and I was honored to serve as a speaker. The first phone designed to empower Deafblind people like myself to stay connected on the go was the iPhone. The iPhone, MacBook Air, and particularly VoiceOver helped me become the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School. Thank you to the engineers, testers, and advocates intentionally designing for accessibility.

Every student should have the support they need, whether that is interpreters, wheelchairs, or computers. Let’s build a world where accessibility feels so widespread that the success of disabled students, even those with multiple disabilities, feels expected, not extraordinary.