The Iconfactory Co-Founder Gedeon Maheux Talks Accessibility On Twitter, ‘The Blow’ Of Losing Twitterrific In New Interview

As The Iconfactory announced, it's the "end of an era" for Twitterrific's mascot, Ollie. The Iconfactory Elon Musk’s Twitter took another turn for the worst this past week when

the company announced an update to its developer agreement which reads in part that “you will not or attempt to (and will not allow others to)… use or access the Licensed

Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.” The translation from legalese to plain English is simple:

third-party clients can get bent—forever. The news came a week after notable Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Twitterrific unceremoniously and mysteriously stopped working,

leading Twitter’s official @TwitterDev account to tweet confirming the outage saying its “enforcing its longstanding API rules” while acknowledging some apps may break as a

result of the newly-implemented policy. As noted by Engadget’s Karissa Bell last week, the clause (in the Restrictions section) was “the only substantive change to Twitter’s

5,000-word document.” In the wake of the hubbub, particularly acute for members of the Apple community where Tweetbot maker Tapbots and Twitterrific owner The Iconfactory have

long served, much digital ink has been spilled in eulogizing both pieces of software out of respect of their sudden and undignified demise. It’s well known in nerdy circles that

Twitterrific was responsible for nearly every bit of the Twitter nomenclature, down to the adoption of a blue bird for the service’s mascot. Although it makes complete business

sense for Twitter to send client apps to the guillotine, the loss of Twitterrific (and Tweetbot and many others) is a great communal loss artistically as well. This goes for the

people who not only built the products, but also for innovation in terms of truly game-changing UI design. As ever, one aspect of this situation that goes largely overlooked is

accessibility, (An exception is this Twitter thread by my friend Karissa.) For The Iconfactory in particular, Twitterrific’s journey to the afterlife hurts even more when

considering the accessibility ramifications. The app has long been beloved by members of the disability community; AppleVis, a well known community-run website for Blind and low

vision Apple users, inducted Twitterrific into their eponymous Hall of Fame in May 2016 for their exemplary VoiceOver integration, amongst other traits. In an interview with me

coincident with the App Store’s tenth birthday in 2018, Twitterrifc’s lead developer, Sean Heber, explained that although the recognition is deeply appreciated, the reward is