Speculative Accessibility
Real. This entry is about something real, written from outside the CharliVerse.
Speculative Accessibility is the name Charlotte Joanne uses for the genre her stories belong to: science fiction that looks at how technology built for the margins ends up redesigning the world for everyone. Accessibility technologies have a habit of escaping their intended use; Speculative Accessibility follows them out.
It runs from satire to comfort. In DeathBot 2000, what starts as a weapon becomes a witness. In Come and Get Me, a blind woman with a robot that could cross the gravel leaves it in the boot and phones her friend instead, because independence includes choosing when to use the machine. In Heart Attacks and Oil Rigs to Training Rigs, the field and Daniel Okafor's sonification begin as accommodations and end up as the way everyone works.
In the CharliVerse, critics have noticed. The Sunday supplement "When the Weapon Becomes the Witness" named the genre in DeathBot 2000, and a five-star review, "From Battlefield to Biscuits", called Come and Get Me its quiet revolution: "If this is the future of Speculative Accessibility, please give us the full series."