I mean, I want my desktop to look beautiful, even if I can’t see it.

Whether you love or hate Aero (Glass) in Windows Vista, there’s one person that I would have never guessed of even having the slightest desire to care about the style of the user interface. And he can’t even see.

James Senior, a Microsoft technical evangelist, met this interesting fellow in Paris on training. I would imagine there are few like him, Saqib Shaikh is blind, but is also a developer. James had an informal chat with him over dinner and wrote about the experience. The interview itself is extremely insightful, and James’ commentary about the atmosphere makes me really really hungry.

This just shows how important it is to develop accessibility features from a ISV’s perspective all the way up to an operating system. Even if you are affecting the lives of only 5% of the users, the difference it makes between allowing that person to not able to use the computer at all and being fully capable of using a computer for even commercial purposes is just astonishing. Big thumbs up to all those people who develop tools assisting handicapped people.