Technology

Apple is putting its weight behind Global Accessibility Awareness Day, taking the opportunity to point to its decades-long record in developing software solutions that make its hardware usable by everybody.

Tim Cookcommitment to making products accessible to everyone

Earlier this year, Apple said:

&One in seven people around the world has some form of disability, whether that be a physical disability involving vision, hearing, or loss of physical motor skills, or a more hidden, invisible disability.&

Systems analyst pilot fish and his longtime programming partner are joined by a new hire, and it's soon clear that she has little grasp of systems -- but she does know how to throw lots of jargon around at managers.

"That insured that she was included in many meetings, which kept her too busy to program," sighs fish. "Because of this she soon became our manager.

"One day she called for a meeting, and my co-worker and I knew something was up due to her deer-in-the-headlights look. It turned out she had committed to design a system in six months that would track a product from when it was made to delivery to a customer.

"After she described it, my co-worker and I explained there was no way that could be done in so short a time. She frantically said we needed to put something together to demonstrate next week. Couldn't we just throw a web page together and hook up a database or something!

Target is lowering the price of its next-day delivery service for household essentials, Target Restock, which will now be free for Target REDcard purchases and $2.99 for all other orders, as the service expands nationwide. Previously, the service cost $4.99 per order & a price meant to rival AmazonPrime Pantry, which today charges a flat shipping fee of $7.99 for orders if customers don&t have the $4.99 monthly subscription that makes orders over $40 ship free.

The price change comes only a year after Target began testing the Restock service in limited markets, and follows the retailerrecent launch of a free Drive Up service for users of its mobile app. The company is also offering free, two-day shipping on hundreds of thousands of Target orders, and is expanding same-day grocery delivery through its Shipt service, as part of its further efforts in challenging the retail giants, Walmart and Amazon.

Unlike Amazon Prime, Target Restock doesn&t require a membership fee & that an angle Walmart adopted with its free shipping program, too.

With Restock, customers have the ability to shop from an assortment of 35,000 household essentials & think, things like baby food, diapers, paper towels, detergent, health and beauty products, and other packaged goods, like peanut butter or snacks.

To use Restock, customers shop online filling their box & up to 45 lbs, which is about the size of a shopping cart & with their selections. They have up until 7 PM Monday through Friday to place the order, then the box is delivered to their door the next day.

Alternately, customers can shop by voice using their Google Home smart speaker or a smartphone with the Google Assistant app installed, as enabled by Targetpartnership with Google on voice-activated shopping.

Target is able to fill orders quickly because itusing its retail stores as the fulfillment centers & it stocks the boxes directly from its store shelves.

The company said in September that Restock thenreached over 70 million customers across the U.S., or about one-fifth of the U.S. population. This morning, the retailer says Restock is broadly available coast to coast, reaching more than 75 percent of the U.S. population.