In October 2025, Marco Salsiccia had no native apps in the App Store. Eight months later, he says he had released at least five iOS apps, two Android apps, and several web projects. Whack A Braille alone had reached more than 11,500 users.
Salsiccia works with OpenAI as an accessibility advisor. Before losing his sight in 2014, he worked in motion graphics and visual design. He later helped teams at Lyft, Deque, and Intuit understand how blind and disabled people navigate software. He knew how to code, but the visually oriented iOS courses and development tools he tried kept native app development largely out of reach.
ChatGPT let Salsiccia build larger web games, but he had to copy the generated code into his project, test it, and return to ChatGPT for fixes. With Codex, he can ask for a change and have it edit the project directly. Salsiccia now uses it almost every day for much of the implementation and CSS while he directs the interaction, sound, input methods, and overall experience. He inspects each build with assistive technology and fixes the errors the model still introduces.
Whack A Braille is an arcade game for building braille speed and confidence. Players can use Braille Screen Input, a braille display, or an external keyboard to practice letters, numbers, symbols, and Grade 2 contractions. Faster modes turn practice into a game of whacking audio moles, earning tickets, and collecting deliberately silly prizes. Salsiccia writes the music and sound cues and keeps improving the game based on feedback he gets from teachers and players. A blind fourth grader is even using it to prepare for the Braille Challenge.
Codex also helped Salsiccia turn web applications and sites into products native to mobile. He says he converted one working web app into an iOS app in less than a day. At an open-source assistive-technology hackathon, he used Codex to understand the APH Monarch SDK and get WordBopper—a fast word game created with Chancey Fleet—running on the multiline braille and tactile-graphics device in about four minutes. He estimates the same work would previously have taken many days of reading, implementation, and debugging.
Sight-centric iOS tools had kept Salsiccia from turning years of coding, product-design, and accessibility experience into native apps. Codex gave him an accessible development process he could steer from initial idea to release.
