Zoë Bentley
Zoë Bentley is an accessibility pioneer who teaches children to code, with 30 million views on YouTube and 179 million views on the Scratch website. Visually impaired herself, she has advocated for accessibility at Scratch and helped lead accessibility at OctoStudio, one of the first block coding apps for blind children that allows K-12 learners to make their own projects.
Zoë's Impact
Creating Equality for Blind Children in STEM
Born visually impaired, Zoë Bentley led conversations on improving accessibility at Scratch, and has helped lead the accessibility of OctoStudio - one of the first apps that allows young blind children to create coding projects.
Zoë seeks to create a world where every child can learn to code. To address the barriers that blind students face in early coding education, Zoë has worked alongside Katya Bulovic, Natalie Rusk, and the entire Lifelong Kindergarten group to innovate accessibility in the OctoStudio app. OctoStudio has been recognized by Perkins School for the Blind for making block-based project coding more accessible to young blind children around the world.
30 Million Views on YouTube
Zoë saw that millions of children needed an easy way to learn coding. She created a YouTube series designed to make coding concepts simple, and that series has gained 30 million views across two channels. Thousands of commenters have said that her videos are the reason they learned to code.
In each video, her focus is to make young people from marginalized backgrounds feel supported - and feel a sense of belonging.
"Accessibility lies at the heart of everything I do. I saw a lack of coding resources on YouTube that were designed for beginners, and I saw the injustice blind students have been facing in block coding education. My work aims to make this world more fair."
Scratch Accessibility Committee
At Scratch, Zoë co-founded the Accessibility Committee with Sarah Otts and Jacy Edelman, bringing together stakeholders from across the team to create accessibility solutions for learners. She managed projects, facilitated meetings, and created a strategic plan for the committee.
