Too Busy to Be Blind: An Apple Engineer's Second Act
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Too Busy to Be Blind: An Apple Engineer's Second Act

B1IntermediateOctober 11, 202627 min
  • Interview
  • Technology

In 2015, after twelve surgeries, Brett Halle lost his sight completely. The engineer who spent twenty years building the Mac had to learn to use it with VoiceOver. He explains Radar, why your bug report matters more than you think, and how he treated VoiceOver like a video game. This is part two of our tribute to Brett Halle, the former Apple engineer and friend of this show, who died on 1 October 2026. It was recorded with Steven Scott and Shaun Preece in July 2024. Yesterday Brett took us inside Apple. Today the story turns. His retinas began...

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completely. He tells us how an engineer who spent 20 years building the Mac learned to use it with

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  • 80% of the words are B1 or easier.
  • 173 words a minute: natural, fairly fast speech.
  • 86 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

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The opening of the episode. The whole transcript is in the player.

0:00

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0:22

Visit uslchampionship.com or uslleagueone.com for complete listings. Find your local club and be part of what's next. Welcome to part two of our tribute to Brett Halley, the former Apple engineer and friend of the show who died on the 1st of October. Yesterday Brett took us inside Apple, the

0:44

next deal, Steve Jobs betting the company on Mac OS X and the day Steve looked straight at Brett and said, don't eff it up. Today the story turns. In 2015, after 12 surgeries, Brett lost his sight completely. He tells us how an engineer who spent 20 years building the Mac learned to use it with voiceover and why he approached that the way a blind person walks a new hotel room. Find the

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