Michael kicks things off from a proper setup. Damashe kicks things off from a boom arm clamped to his nightstand — because he's mid-move and the show must go on.

From there, the conversation covers a lot of ground: Michael is beta testing Quill, a new cross-platform Markdown writing app from BITS that runs on Mac and Windows, written entirely in Python. Damashe shares a LaunchBar trick he'd never tried before — copying and moving files entirely within LaunchBar — and it turns out it works exactly the way it should.

Then things get into the meat of the episode. Michael has been building a podcast app using Claude as his primary coding tool. He's not an iOS programmer, but he can develop an iOS app — and that distinction matters. Accessibility has been part of the project from day one, including a rule in his CLAUDE.md file that every code change gets run through the accessibility agents from community-access.org before anything moves forward. No unlabeled buttons. No accessibility regressions. Just a rule that runs automatically.

That leads to a bigger question: with AI tools making it easier than ever to build software, what excuse do developers actually have for shipping inaccessible apps? Michael makes the case that it's not a knowledge problem anymore. It's a willingness problem.

Damashe pushes back on the "just vibe code it" framing. He has no problem with using AI to build things — he's doing it himself. What he takes issue with is the negligence: shipping code you haven't tested, don't understand, and haven't checked for security or accessibility, then asking someone else to deal with the fallout. Open source maintainers are already feeling this. Bug bounty programs are drowning in low-quality AI-generated reports. The tool isn't the problem. The behavior is.

They also get into feedback — what it's like to receive bug reports when you're the one who built the thing — and Damashe shares the story of how he got Marco Arment to add rotor actions to Overcast, one conversation at a time.

Links and things mentioned:

• Quill (BITS Markdown writing app for Mac and Windows)
• LaunchBar — https://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/
• community-access.org accessibility agents
• Overcast — https://overcast.fm
• Technically Working —

Episode Notes

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