Despite being well past its closing, Houston Market continues to be filled with the lively conversation of Weingarten tutors and other students who have sought refuge from the bitter wind. After failing to find vacant seating on the upper level, Crystal Yang (C ’29) and I finally find a quiet spot near Bento with—to our surprise—swiveling stools. Amid the uncharacteristic peace of the Market, Crystal begins to reflect on the creation of her passion project, Audemy, which has turned from a few lines of code to a full–fledged nonprofit that makes popular games like Wordle and Roblox accessible to blind children.
Crystal’s journey traces back to her freshman year of high school in Houston, Texas. This was in 2021, when students everywhere were obsessed with Wordle. While her peers were competing with each other to guess the day’s word, Crystal observed how one of her friends was excluded from the entertainment because she was blind. Wanting to include her friend in the experience, Crystal spent that summer coding an audio–based version of Wordle, which she coined “Heardle.” While doing research for her innovative game, Crystal started exploring the broader lack of gaming and academic resources available to those with vision impairments. She quickly discovered that, in addition to being sidelined from popular online game play, over 70% of blind students are at least a grade level behind their sighted peers. They suffer from a lack of access to both well–designed educational curriculums and the majority of stimulating digital games that are proven to benefit development.
“I realized that my invention could offer a solution, so I gravitated towards education and increasing accessibility,” Crystal says. “I combined my interests and started building educational audio games for blind and visually impaired students.” She created Audemy, an online platform that services the educational and entertainment needs of blind students in over 130 countries.
Crystal’s extensive background and interest in programming helped turn her vision into reality. Throughout high school, she participated in hackathons, engaged with computing clubs, and took various computer science courses. Once she became familiar with the world of coding, she started carving her own path. “I started off from a very technical background, and got introduced to building my own adventure by doing it myself,” Crystal adds. “I liked seeing [the process] in real time and learning as I went.”
After developing her first prototype, Crystal took “Heardle” 90 minutes north to Texas A&M University, where she refined her game by creating multiple versions and testing their efficacy on users. Crystal reflects that, initially, “there’s a high barrier to entry to get started, and it’s super intimidating because you're doing college–level or master’s–level research as a random high school kid.” Her mentors at the university helped her enhance her game and navigate the complex processes of published research. This collaboration ultimately improved her ability to advocate for increased inclusivity and accessibility in the larger gaming community.
What began as a one–woman show soon transformed into a team effort; Audemy grew into an established nonprofit with over 60 volunteers from a range of academic institutions, including Northwestern and the University of California, Berkeley and Irvine. Consisting of developers, grant writers, and public outreach members, Audemy’s team has designed a catalog of over 50 math and language games. To maintain the quality of their games, Crystal and her team rely on significant user testing. They partner with blind schools across states to obtain feedback from teachers and students, using metrics such as accessibility and engagement with the game to make informed evaluations. Teachers assist their students in accessing the website and relay the students’ critique back to the Audemy team. As Crystal puts it, “Since the games are designed for visually disabled students, they’re the ones who inform the decision–making of the final product.” This feedback process is done repeatedly—sometimes even 50 times—until the team is satisfied with the game, after which Crystal approves its launch on the platform.
This partnership not only shapes the appearance and functionality of games, but also determines what gets built in the first place. If students or teachers have requests for specific types of games, Audemy’s team will brainstorm ideas to fulfill that need.
Since its creation, Audemy has evolved from modifying preexisting games for accessibility to creating original games—targeting demographics that span from kindergarten to eighth grade—that blend educational concepts with entertaining features. One game, called Car Counting, instructs users to count the number of cars by listening to the sound effect of cars driving by. Another game, Shape Shark, uses an engaging underwater theme to teach students geometry.
To expand Audemy’s reach to the adolescent and teenage populations, Crystal and her team surveyed older visually impaired students and noticed that “a big disparity between them and their peers was that they couldn't access a lot of the popular games.” Despite having access to Audemy’s educational tools, these groups still felt socially isolated because they couldn’t interact with the digital communities of trending games like Roblox and Minecraft. To resolve this demand, Audemy now also provides over 100 toolkits that teach blind players how to use sound cues and accessibility shortcuts to play these games.
Crystal mentions the impact the Penn community has had on Audemy's development since she matriculated. “It's been good talking to professors and people who've worked in the Graduate School of Education and seeing how they approach education and development,” she says. She enjoys observing Penn’s “community of builders” and the various approaches they take, hoping to combine these ideas with Penn’s resources to strengthen Audemy’s influence.
While Crystal continues to remain involved with her nonprofit’s progress, she notes her shift into a more advisory role after coming to Penn, taking on “[fewer] labor–intensive” tasks. “Back in the day, Audemy was kind of my main thing,” Crystal explains. “I would come home from school and—after homework—work on it for hours.” At Penn, however, she is choosing to be more “hands–off” in order to balance her academics and participate in her college community. She is currently involved in Penn Sargam, an Indian music group on campus, and Penn Blockchain, a technology and digital asset management club. These extracurriculars have allowed Crystal to further explore her interests beyond Audemy and enjoy a well–rounded college life.
Crystal’s work is a testament to the power of curiosity and passion. When looking to the future, she hopes to continue raising awareness of disability injustice, urging her peers to use their skills and privilege to help the less fortunate. Through Audemy and her future creations, she not only aspires to reduce the inequalities suffered by blind students, but also inspire further meaningful conversations about inclusivity within the gaming community.
