So at this point based on the status of Rules Machine are we to gather that the relationship is still fractured.
What steps have you taken to repair the relationship with the very people that keep the majority of us here?
While we are your evangelists to the world at large we depend on you working with the smartapp developers to make this a product worth evangelizing over.
Weâve reached out personally to each of our top contributors to get their feedback and open a dialogue.
nobody asked me 
BTW, if anybody with an IOS device wants to try this for themselves, itâs simple:
And in addition to the blindfold, do this test with your eyes on the screen. This is where you catch missed and mislabeled elements.
http://www.applevis.com/forum/accessibility-advocacy/ios-app-voiceover-accessibility-test-plan
Also, I just realized I made an assumption that people testing accessibility know that we donât use actual blindfolds. There is a feature built into iOS called âscreen curtainâ which will turn the screen completely off while you are using voice over. Many people who use voiceover use screen curtain because it saves battery and gives you privacy. And of course it means you canât cheat while youâre doing an accessability test. So a blindfold test means âscreen curtain on.â (As long as youâre using an iOS device.)
And if youâre hardcore, A11y did a 40 minute âcrash courseâ for developers on how to test for Voiceover accessibility which is available on YouTube. Full captions as well.
@JDRoberts thank you for those - even as a iOS developer I was not aware of the screen curtain feature (and I did make sure that my application is as accessible as possible. Feedback from some blind users was extremely helpful).
From personal experience I have to say that direct feedback from users using accessibility features is extremely valuable. Not relying on those features on a daily basis requires making assumptions on what might be useful - and those assumptions typically prove to be incorrect.
Blindfolded staff (albeit insightful) is a bit different than a native voiceover user⌠I would encourage you to keep a blind QA engineer on contract for testing purposes.
@alex is this time different than this pat one year ago?
I brought this up in an earlier post where I said that I have been here over 2.5 years now and this has been an ever-present issue. Every so often thereâs an apology and a promise that this time youâre going to fix it, redouble efforts, etc.
Just saying⌠It just seems like weâve been here sever times before.
I think this really comes down to all the changes we are making to our decision making processes and company priorities. Alex and the leadership team have done a really good job at setting and communicating the correct priorities for the next year and the top two are explicitly focused on achieving platform stability and reliability.
^^^^^restated from above
To add a little more itâs more about intensity of focus on very specific goals. Alex and our leadership team have gone through some painstaking efforts to remove distractions. That is in addition to making very clear exactly what the priorities are and like I said above the top two on that list are geared towards having a organization that can scale (Weâre hiring big time!) to provide stability and reliability as well as focusing the efforts of that organization on stability.
From the inside, I can tell you, itâs different this time.
I believe this is the plan, and have already shared all these insights with the UX/UI team.
I am curious, do you know if there will be any work from home positions offered? I looked at the Careers site but it looks like you have to be in the Mountain View, CA or Minneapolis, MN areas.
@Alex - i, for one, very much appreciate your post(s). I have been a solid supported of the platform for several years, but recently have been wondering about its long-term viability and whether it was time to look for a different HA solution. Not to take away from the efforts and communications made by the developer reps - which have been great - but your involvement here does make me feel more comfortable that ST is truly focused on addressing the serious issues in the platform and that I should stick around.
I donât know, I can try and find out.
Thanks for the sentiment. I only feel more intensely now than I did all the way back to Kickstarter. If we can just provide the tools and get out of the way, we can make the world smarter, together.
Could someone pease detail to me what steps have been taken to re-establish communications and contributions from developers such as @bravenel
Why does it matter? If the stability, transparency and the developer tools improve as @alex and @ben stated, then I am sure we will hear back from @bravenel and many, many others who have lost faith in SmartThings. If not, well is nothing we can do, but to move on tooâŚ
I think this is between SmartThings and the developers. They donât owe us any explanation on this. At least that is how I feel.
I somewhat agree, I think they owe us some kind of statement to show whether they are working to restore those relationships but I also feel that @slagle has already provided that statement.
No offence but that should be a low priority item for them right now. They need to make the product work, they way it was sold to all of us first. Mending fences is important but that can only happen once they figure out WTF they did to mess up their product this bad.
Reach out to @JDRoberts and have him do your testingâŚ
Thanks, but no thanks. I donât have enough energy to take on any new projects. 
There are lots of places to find appropriate accessibility testers, including NFB, a11y teams, Tecla, and applevis. Iâve previously sent multiple resources to SmartThings UI staff.