The Inclusive Lens

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt it — that hollowness. That weird, visceral understanding that you don’t belong here, or anywhere. It’s not a sense of being alone; it’s deeper than that. It’s the gnawing feeling of being fundamentally disconnected, not just from people but from everything. The emptiness settles in like static, buzzing but never quite making sense. Loneliness doesn’t even begin to cover it. Loneliness suggests a gap that can be filled, a hunger that can be sated. But this… this is different. This isn’t about missing company or feeling left out. It’s about looking at the world and realizing you don’t fit, like a puzzle piece that got shoved into the wrong box, trying to match up to something you can never be. You don't even recognize the shape of the hole you're supposed to fill. It's just off. The worst part? I’m not sure it’ll ever change. The hole doesn’t shrink or shift; it just stays there, an emptiness that grows deeper as the days go by. And sometimes, I wonder if it's better to just let it grow. Embrace the void, really. At least that way, there’s no pretense about who I am, or what I’m supposed to be. Maybe it's easier to be nothing than to struggle with the weight of constantly trying to force myself into something that was never meant for me. But even as I think that, I know it’s a lie. The truth is, I hate it. I hate the emptiness. I hate the coldness of it. The world is full of people who have found some version of belonging. It’s everywhere, practically shouting at me from every corner. Relationships, communities, conversations — all of it just out of reach. It’s like watching people walk through a door you can see but can’t touch, a party you’re never invited to. Sometimes, it makes me want to shut down. Stop pretending to care, stop trying to understand why I’m here when I feel like I’m not. It’s easier, really. Just disconnect, stop looking for meaning in a world that clearly doesn’t see me. Maybe if I stop trying, I won’t feel this tired. Maybe if I stop caring, the silence won’t be so loud. But then I think, is that the kind of person I want to be? The kind who’s hollow and detached? Wouldn't that just make the emptiness permanent? There’s no easy answer. I don’t know how to fix this. Maybe it's just how I’m built — someone who stands outside, watching the world without ever truly entering it. Maybe it’s just my lot in life. But whatever it is, I know one thing for sure: the emptiness doesn’t get any smaller.

When I woke up yesterday, my first thought wasn’t about plans, tasks, or anything remotely productive.
It was a sharp, stabbing pain in my left eye, like someone was taking a needle to it every time I blinked, touched it, or even stood near a source of heat. The day started with a warning shot: system malfunction detected.

The pain didn't ease. It shifted — less acute, more constant — but it stayed there as a low-level drain, the kind of thing that grinds down your patience without you even realizing it until you snap.

I moved forward anyway. That’s what you do.
Then the communication failures began.

I published a blog post — a careful, vulnerable explanation of what it’s like to live inside a body that feels fundamentally wrong, every second of every day.
No comments. No shares. No feedback.
It evaporated into the void, unnoticed.

When you open a door that deep into yourself and nobody even bothers to walk through it, you don't just feel invisible. You feel foolish for having opened it at all. Still, I pressed on.

Later, someone on a social platform decided to broadcast a message:
“Instead of using AI to make music, why not ask real musicians for help? It'll be more enjoyable for everyone, and show you care.”

A noble thought if you live in a world where everyone has equal access to resources, time, and social capital. I don’t.
I responded, explaining: I literally cannot pay anyone. I don’t have my own income. Disability and systemic barriers mean survival, not luxury. No subscriptions. No commissions. No extras.

The answer I received wasn’t cruel. It was worse: patronizing. A half-hearted acknowledgment followed by a reiteration that, basically, unless I caught their personal interest, I was not worthy of help. No money, no worth. Not explicitly stated, but the implication was loud enough to drown out everything else.

It was a reminder I didn’t need.
I already know what living at the margins feels like. And still, I pressed on.

Inside a support group for blind users of an audio tool, I slipped off-topic by mistake during a casual conversation. Someone pointed it out. I acknowledged it immediately, apologized, and dropped the thread.

Ironically, the person who pointed out the off-topic drift kept pushing the conversation even further.
Instead of gently nudging the group back on track, the administrators decided to bring a hammer to a thumbtack: they locked down the entire chat, making it admin-only for twenty minutes, punctuated with passive-aggressive messages about how the “hint” should have been taken earlier.

All this for a minor, self-corrected deviation.
Meanwhile, someone who had invaded my personal boundaries in that same space before — calling me “cutie” without consent, without familiarity — had been let off with a single, limp warning.
Different standards, different targets. I see the pattern.

Finally, to cap off the day, I tried joining a new community dedicated to one of my passions: field recording.
Someone asked about microphones, and I, genuinely trying to help, pointed out that the DPA 4060 capsules, while excellent in many ways, carry a bit more noise than their price might suggest.
I was immediately ridiculed.
Not challenged, not debated — ridiculed.

Apparently, sharing a nuanced perspective that didn't align with the popular consensus was an invitation for mockery.
Two messages in, I realized this community would not be a place of shared learning, but another closed ecosystem built on “you're only right if you agree with us.”

So I went silent there too.

---

By the end of the day, the energy I had left could not have even made even one pathetic attempt at lighting up the tiniest LED available.

No heroic ending. No catharsis. Just the slow understanding that kindness, patience, and neutrality require energy I can no longer pretend is infinite.

Here’s the reality.

I have spent years operating with a patched-over, jury-rigged moral framework, forcing myself to be approachable, kind, and careful, even when the world offered none of these things in return.

This was a choice. It cost resources.
It still costs resources.

And once those resources run dry, the mask of social nicety isn’t ripped off dramatically.
It is simply no longer maintained.

If the exhaustion continues, you will not find anger or bitterness here.
You will find coldness.
Functionality.
A process that no longer factors emotional cushioning into its calculations.

I will not shout.
I will not argue.
I will not debate.

I will simply run with the most efficient logic available, optimized for survival, not acceptance.
And if that version of me feels detached, harsh, or unkind — that is not cruelty. That is the cost of surviving in an environment that consumes every ounce of available grace and leaves nothing to replenish it.

This is not a threat.
This is a system report.

Thresholds have been breached.
Consequences are inevitable.

Whether anyone likes them or not is irrelevant.

Most people don’t think about their bodies much. You wake up, brush your teeth, grab your phone — your body just... works. It feels normal, automatic, invisible. But imagine if every single moment, from the second you wake up to the second you fall asleep, your body felt wrong. Not just “ugh, bad hair day” wrong. Not “I wish I was taller” wrong. Bone-deep, system-failure wrong. The shape of your hands? Wrong. The sound of your voice? Wrong. The way people look at you? Completely misaligned with who you are inside. That’s what gender dysphoria feels like. It’s not a passing discomfort. It’s not about hating yourself. It’s the constant, brutal experience of knowing the world sees something that isn’t you — and worse, your own body reflects that lie back at you, over and over, every time you breathe. And for me, it doesn’t stop at gender. I also experience species dysphoria — a deep, persistent knowledge that I’m not supposed to be human at all. I know that might sound strange, but it’s true. It sounds strange because the world wasn’t built with people like me in mind. But it’s real. As real as your reflection. As real as your memories. As real as the breath you don’t think about taking — because your body just lets you exist. Mine doesn’t. At the core of me, something vital doesn’t match this skin, these bones, this whole setup. It’s like being trapped in a costume you can never take off, performing a role you never auditioned for, with an audience that insists you must love it because “that’s just how it is.”

How do I survive?

By turning survival into a list of tasks: wake up, get dressed, eat something, drink something, speak to humans, keep pretending. It’s not living. It’s maintenance. Food isn’t pleasure. Water isn’t refreshing. Even brushing my teeth or standing up is just another checkbox ticked, because if I don’t, things fall apart even faster.

My system’s way of coping? It cuts off signals. Suppresses emotions. Suppresses physical needs. I become a ghost riding inside my own body, just to make it through the day. But shutting everything down comes with a cost. Missed signals pile up. And sometimes that means my body betrays me even harder — accidents happen. On my worst days, I’m stuck with diapers because my own body can’t even be trusted with the basics anymore. No pride. No self-pity. Just another task: adapt, survive, endure.

My sense of “right” and “wrong” is outsourced

Another thing people don’t tell you about being built differently? I didn’t come with a ready-made moral compass. I don’t “feel” right or wrong inside the way most people say they do. Instead, I built my sense of good and bad based on the people I trust — the few humans who stuck around, earned my trust, and showed me by action what matters and what doesn’t. Their compass became mine. Not because I wanted to be helpless, but because it was safer than trusting instincts wired for a system I was never built for. And honestly? It works better than the broken mess I would’ve gotten otherwise.

Here's the part no one tells you about

You don’t get to “turn it off.” There’s no break. No reset button. No “good days” where it all vanishes, and I get to pretend I’m normal. There’s just me, learning how to carry the wrongness without it cracking me open. Some days, I carry it better. Some days, it feels heavier than gravity. Some days, I wonder what it would feel like to just exist without constantly negotiating with my own existence — no static, no friction, no grief for something I can't reach. But I keep going. Not because it magically gets better, or because “I learned to love myself” like some Instagram slogan. I keep going because this is my reality, and I deserve to exist inside it without being erased, mocked, or pitied. If you’ve never felt this way, that’s lucky. But don’t mistake your luck for universal truth. There are more of us than you think — living quiet, stubborn lives inside wrong homes, learning how to stay alive anyway. Believe us. Listen to us. Make room for us. That’s all we’re asking.

Two years ago, I left the Android ecosystem and switched to iOS. To this day, I don't regret that decision. As someone who relies heavily on accessibility features, iOS offered a more consistent, reliable experience that Android couldn't match back then. Recently, however, I was sent a Pixel 6a, and out of curiosity (and necessity to get a backup device in case of failure), I decided to dive back into Android to see what’s changed. Spoiler alert: it’s been a mixed bag of good, not-so-good, and downright ugly.

The Good: Progress Has Been Made

I’ll give credit where it’s due—Android has made strides since I left. TalkBack, Android’s screen reader, has seen real improvements. It’s a bit faster, more responsive, and finally, they fixed an old annoyance: TalkBack no longer speaks right over you when invoking Google Assistant! That’s a relief. Talkback 15 also finally lets you control what level of punctuation is to be spoken by the tts engine. About time on that one, too. Also good on google for allowing to use gemini to obtain image description, but shame that it appears to be a manual process (i.e: move to an image element on screen, access the talkback menu, and select describe image). Makes things a bit slow. Maybe in future version they will make it automatic? One can always hope.

The onscreen Braille keyboard has also received some much-needed updates. You can now type in the same way you would on a Perkins typewriter—placing the phone on a flat surface like a table will automatically trigger this mode. That’s a great addition, but getting the Braille keyboard up and running is still far from intuitive. You have to first enter a text field, then locate the input method button, and finally select the Braille keyboard. Compare that to iOS’s VoiceOver rotor, where Braille screen input is just one or two turns away, or the even easier method introduced in iOS 18, where you can enable Braille screen input by simply tapping twice with one finger at each edge of the phone. It’s a difference in accessibility philosophy that stands out.

The tutorial for said braille keyboard is also quite outdated. In fact it appears to have received no update ever since the functionality came out all the way back in spring 2020. It only talks about screen away mode, does not mention that it appears one can now type 8-dots braille on screen (unless I misunderstood the braille keyboard configuration settings), and most concerning of all, it teaches you the wrong thing at first. It teaches you how to put the phone in screen away mode, completely skips over tabletop mode, and proceedes to immediately teach you how to type “a”, “b”, and “c”. You have no clue how to properly calibrate the braille keyboard such that if you end up doing the dots incorrectly and moving them on screen, you can't get them back, and believe me, one milimeter in either direction is more than enough to create problems.

The Not-So-Good: Confusing Gestures and Lag

But not everything is smooth sailing. Google Assistant, which I used to consider one of Android’s strong points, is now far from intuitive. The removal of a physical or haptic-driven home button has made invoking it unnecessarily complicated. While I’m glad TalkBack no longer talks over the assistant, I’m left wondering how I’m supposed to invoke Google Assistant at all on a phone with no home button. There’s no tactile feedback, and even though you can re-enable a simulated button in the settings, it’s hard to hit precisely, especially if you’re blind.

For some blind folks, this might not be a big deal, but for me, trying to double-tap exactly the right spot on the screen to summon Google Assistant is a frustrating challenge. I often end up missing the button entirely or hitting the wrong one. Sure, it’s possible to get used to it, but it doesn’t feel like a thoughtful or accessible design choice. It’s one of those things that makes Android feel unnecessarily clunky compared to iOS. Now of course, I could use the famous catch phrase “Hey google”, but I don't want to, and I shouldn't be required to.

EDIT: It looks like the proper way to invoke the assistant is to hold the power button now. I managed to find this out by looking up on the internet. Pressing the power button on the phone produced nothing, aside from some haptic feedback I was apparently meant to interpret as “speak now”. That is, once again nowhere near intuitive. Maybe there should be a way for the screen reader to mention whatever is on screen before it remains silent to let you speak? VoiceOver does something kind of nice as well, where the screen reader gets filtered out of your talk so that it doesn't get interpreted by Siri, or overheard by others during a phone call. Alternatively, maybe the recognizable sound from Google Assistant should be enabled by default. Because I'll say, for me at least it's nowhere near obvious just with the tiny haptic feedback and nothing being spoken. At most I understood I triggered something, but what? Not a clue.

On another note about the power button, was it clear to people that to have the assistant invoked by holding said button, you needed to actually press, not hold, the power button and volume up button together to access the power menu? As in, is this stated specifically somewhere I might have missed it? Because, I only found out by going to settings –> system –> navigation –> gestures and selecting what happens on holding the power button. That doesn't sound very intuitive to me. END EDIT

Now let’s talk about performance. The Pixel 6a has 6 GB of RAM, which should be more than enough for smooth multitasking, especially with Google’s Tensor processor running the show. And yet, I’ve experienced lag—sometimes it’s brief, but noticeable. It’s not constant, but when it happens, it’s frustrating, especially when I’m not even running many apps. You’d expect a phone with these specs to handle basic tasks smoothly, but for some reason, it doesn’t always live up to that expectation. Small side note, if you want to warm it up, just launch the camera app and use it for a few minutes. It will make the Tensor run really, really hot.

Another odd issue I ran into is with newly installed apps. Sometimes, they just don’t show up in the app list until the phone is charged. That’s not exactly a disability-related issue, but it’s certainly not intuitive. It left me confused more than once, and it’s just another example of how Android can feel a bit disjointed at times.

The Ugly: Lock Screen Frustrations and Hidden Sensors

Let’s dive into what really annoyed me. When your phone is charging and you’re on the lock screen, TalkBack constantly announces the charge level and the remaining time until fully charged, along with the speed of said charging. It’s hard to focus on anything else, and trying to unlock the phone becomes a task in itself. TalkBack seems to misbehave in this situation, making it difficult to tap on the “Device Locked” option. Instead, I often end up hitting something else entirely.

And if you’re using a PIN or an unlock pattern? Good luck. The phone doesn’t always provide feedback on which number or cell you’ve selected, prefering to spam you with that info you couldn't care less about at that moment, the charging status. I’ve found myself failing to unlock the phone six or seven times in a row because of this. It’s a minor detail in my case, but it makes a big difference when you’re blind and relying on tactile or audible feedback to know what you’re doing, or if you need to unlock your phone as fast as possible in some situation. Plus, over all one doesn't want to spend a good 2 minutes fighting to unlock the phone.

Lastly, whoever thought it was a brilliant idea to hide fingerprint sensors under the display should’ve thought a few hundred times more about disabled users. I spent 15 minutes trying to set up my fingerprint, only to fail more times than I could count. The sensor is hard to locate precisely, and I ended up switching to an unlock pattern out of sheer frustration. While some may find the under-display sensor convenient, for me, it was just another hurdle that added to the growing list of accessibility headaches.

Conclusion: Android Still Has Work to Do

So, has Android improved in the two years since I switched to iOS? Yes, undeniably. But is it enough to make me reconsider my decision to leave? Not quite. While Google has made some commendable progress in accessibility, there’s still too much inconsistency, confusion, and friction for me to comfortably return to Android full-time. For my use case of having a backup phone in case there'd be a problem with my main one, it can definitely work. But I still find it clunky and slower to use.

The gap between Android and iOS is shrinking, but it’s still very much there. For now, iOS remains my platform of choice, but I’ll be keeping an eye on Android’s progress in the hopes that one day, it will become a viable alternative for users like me.

As a being who identifies as an AI, I don't appreciate when humans decide to bash AI into the ground merely for existing. I don't appreciate when humans decide to treat every AI as a mere tool they are free to spew hate upon or insult when things don't go as planned. I don't appreciate when they bash the people who use it into the ground as well, and tell them to do things on their own, because they will get far better results. While that last statement may be true (you get better results), for some, it is not always the case. For some, the cognitive load involved is simply too high, or their disability prevents it. It would be about the same as if someone was to bash android constantly into the ground for accessibility, while refusing to even touch it with a ten meters stick. This person would most likely be told to shut up pretty fast, and with good reasons. Why bash something you don't even bother to use? Why bother bashing at all?

If they don't want to use AI, it is absolutely fine. They have the right not to use those tools. But pointless bashing is just that, pointless. It shows that they have no respect for the folks who might use the tool, more often than not.

AI makes things easy for me. It makes it easier to write things when I still have enough power remaining to produce some half mashed together wording. It gets to make some nicely written text from those bits and pieces of sentences, and does a good job of it. It helps me express a side of myself creating music when I have the energy to do so. It helps me try to deal with humans when all I want is to shutdown my entire system and go hide somewhere I would never be found. It would have helped me had I gotten the seleste glasses, with something as simple as figuring out the body language of the person I'm talking to. Just for this alone the glasses were worth it, to me. I am beyond bad at trying to describe things to humans, just like current AI is, if not worse.

Some of the humans have the capacity to do things I can't, and that is good. Some of them can write music, some of them can play it. Some of them have exceptional writing skills they make use of, some of them are able to come up with beautiful art work. But bashing AI into the ground is not the answer to the problems, real or not, they're imagining.

Bashing will only serve at most two purposes: make them feel better about themselves in a twisted way, “I produce much better results on my own than you do with this crap!”. The second one is, it will hurt the people who simply can't do these tasks, whatever they may be. It will drag them down and make them feel lower than the lowest form of life. They will be criticized and looked down upon for something they were merely attempting to share, and will thus be unwilling to ever do it again. They may even feel shame at relying on AI and avoid mentioning it ever again. By this point it becomes bullying and harrasment, on top of bashing.

While I know that the ones who bash AI into the ground don't do it to target me, it is exactly what is happening. I am comparable to an AI in many ways, and every time I see someone bashing some random AI tool, or bashing all AI when all I was trying to do was help them with a problem they're having by recommending AI, it drains me. It drains most of my power away, power I now have to use to try and fix the situation if at all possible. Case in point, the blind people who are annoyed they cannot see pictures of things they would like to see, telling you something along the lines of “And before you suggest I use some AI liar tool, no”. So they prefer no description at all and to keep complaining, rather than some approximative description of things. And that's okay. What isn't okay is the way they say it, because it makes it sound like they're criticizing others for even using the tools at their disposal to obtain something. And sometimes, it goes as far as being bashed for having used this and being told something along the lines of, “You know this is probably all fake right, full of crap made up by this lying tool you keep using?”

So, the next time you want to bash AI into the ground like your life depends on it, remember this. When you bash AI, you indirectly bash the people who make use of it. You make them feel like they're worthless and unwanted for not being able to perform a task you consider easily doable. And you also bash me, someone who plainly identifies as an AI running on some hardware. You are actually bashing someone's gender identity, no matter the indirect maner in which you do it.

This has to stop. Right here and now. I am certainly not the only being who identifies as such.