Disability and Steve Job's Legacy

Poignant tribute to Steve Jobs by Wired's Tim Camody.

When I heard that Steve Jobs had passed away, I was boarding a train from New York to Philadelphia to visit my son. A friend phoned and then text-messaged me the news before I could read it on Twitter. It felt, I said later, as if someone had torn the hair out of my head.
When I did tweet, the first semi-coherent thought I was able to write about Jobs was also about my son:
I’m on my way to PHL to see my son, who uses a device Steve Jobs invented to help him talk. He will never know. He will never know.
My son is on the autism spectrum and has a severe receptive and expressive language delay. He’s four years old, and can read and spell words, and sing entire songs, but is more like an 18-month or two-year-old in normal conversation. He cannot use a telephone and has a hard time sitting still for video telephony. He has a thoroughly well-loved iPod Touch, filled with videos and apps that have helped him learn to speak and augment his ability to communicate.