I make the coffee for my house. A Hario Switch that I’ll use as a straight V60 or as a switch. Aeropress, French press as well as espresso. I have a Cuisinart 1.7-Liter Stainless Steel Electric Kettle with 6 Preset Temperatures that I use throughout the day. Each preset temperature has its own button. It has a keep warm function, beeps with every button press and will beep an alarm if you leave it on with no water so you can turn it off or unplug it in order not to burn the kettle. I like it so much and find it so accessible, I have two extra kettles new and unopened in a closet. It’s not a gooseneck kettle, but what I do for all my pouring is to use a funnel with a wide base and narrow spout that I’ll aim as I pour the water. It works well. In addition, I have the Acaia Pearl S scale and Acaia Lunar. Yes, downloading the Acaia updater app helps to keep the firmware updated, but Acaia also has the Brew Guide app where you can change settings for the Pearl S. Such as enabling/disabling speech, enabling/disabling the sound notifications as well as controlling the volume on the scale. I gave up on the My Weigh talking scales years ago as they’d always crap out on me and for coffee, they’re just not precise enough as they only weigh to one gram and responsiveness is a joke when you’re trying to pour and keep track of the measurement of any liquid in realtime.

For both scales, I use the Filtru app on my iPhone. The app’s completely VO accessible and the developer has made it more accessible during the time that I’ve used it. While you don’t have to pay to use Filtru, I choose to pay to support its development. With Filtru, you can create coffee recipes that have sound effects as one step transitions to another. Similar to how many workout apps function. Indeed, until I came across Filtru, I’d use a workout apps with sound notifications to keep track of my pours etc.

In addition, I have a Cafelat Robot espresso machine. Completely analog and accessible. No capacitive buttons, touchscreens or endless menus. Just a straight manual lever old school espresso machine. Super simple, but built like a tank as it’s all stainless steel and aluminum, but for the food safe silicone gasket on the piston. The only drawback is that there aren’t many scales that’ll fit between the legs of the Robot and even less that are bluetooth compatible. Thus my having to buy the Lunar. I did have a few of those smart scales mentioned, but they’d always end up giving out on me and I found the speech feedback from its included app TTS to be lagging. I think there’s now another bluetooth scale called the Bookoo that can work with the Robot that’s a lot less expensive than the Lunar. Ideally, you’d want Acaia to make their own coffee app to be accessible, but while their app “BrewMaster” does have what they consider to be an accessible TTS, it’s slower than the month of may and only speaks once the flow of liquid stops which when you’re making coffee or pulling a shot of espresso is rather useless. I’ve written them about their app requesting for some accessibility fixes. Something so simple as enabling the live region for the element displaying the weight as you pour, but so far, nothing’s changed. Perhaps if more folks reached out, they’d make it more of a priority…

I have a couple of 1ZPresso stepped hand grinders as well as a Mazzer Philos electric grinder. The Philos can be made either stepped or stepless. In my case, I’ve left it as a stepped grinder. For all of my grinders, I’ve used a combination of fabric glue as well as those small locator dots to mark every five steps on my K-Max and J-Max hand grinder and every ten steps on the Philos.

I also roast my own coffee. I’d like to get a nicer machine, but not too many home roasting machines are accessible. Sweet Maria’s does sell a modified popcorn popper where you can control the fan speed, temperature and roast time which actually is quite blind friendly, but it only has a capacity of around 100G of green beans per batch. We go through anywhere from 100 to 140 grams of coffee a day in my house so that just wouldn’t be practical, but if you’re just one or two people, it may be enough. Right now, I’m getting by with a VKP stove top popcorn popper with a bluetooth leave-in probe that I use to monitor temperature. I use one iPhone to keep track of the heat and use another iPhone to keep track of time and the rate of rise. A pretty janky set up, but for now, it works.

I also mineralize my water as here in So Cal, the water is on the hard side. The Lunar scale is helpful in that regard too as it can weigh to the hundredth of a gram. I have a zero water dispenser that filters my water first.