Crystal Yang

Crystal Yang is the founder and CEO of Audemy, a nonprofit platform that develops AI-powered audio games for blind and visually impaired students.^[1] She founded the organization in 2022 at age 17 while a student at Obra D. Tompkins High School in Katy, Texas, after a blind classmate was unable to participate in a lunchtime Wordle game because the puzzle had no audio interface.^[7][19] Audemy has since grown to more than 50 educational audio games used in every state school for the blind in the United States, reaching over 200,000 users across 136 countries.^[1][18]

Yang was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Games category in 2026, at age 18, making her one of the youngest honorees in the class.^[10][8] In May 2026, she was selected as one of 26 members of OpenAI's inaugural ChatGPT Futures class and received a $10,000 grant for Audemy's use of AI in accessible education.^[3][4] She has also published three first-author research papers at ACM CHI and ICMI conferences on accessible AI and audio-based learning, presenting work in Paris, Costa Rica, and Japan.^[5][18]

Yang is currently a first-year student in the Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology at the University of Pennsylvania, pursuing dual degrees in computer science through the School of Engineering and Applied Science and business through the Wharton School.^[18][2] Prior to college, she won the Intel Global AI Impact Festival grand prize, the Amazon Breaking Barriers Hackathon, and the Points of Light Daily Point of Light Award from the George H.W. Bush Foundation.^[19][5]

Crystal Jingying Yang grew up in Katy, Texas, a suburb west of Houston.^[6] She attended Obra D. Tompkins High School in the Katy Independent School District, where she served as president of the computer science club and co-president of the local Girls Who Code chapter.^[14][6] She graduated in 2025 with a 4.0 GPA and earned the AP Scholar with Distinction designation.^[14]

Yang was also an accomplished classical musician during high school. She was named a Texas Music Educators Association All-State Violist and won the grand prize at the Texas UIL Chamber Music Competition, where her string quartet ranked first in the state.^[16]

During high school, Yang conducted research at the Sketch Recognition Labs at Texas A&M University under researchers Paul Taele and Tracy Anne Hammond.^[18][5] That work focused on conversational interfaces and accessible AI for blind users and resulted in her first peer-reviewed publication, presented at the ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction in Paris.^[5] She went on to publish two additional first-author papers at ACM CHI and ICMI, presenting in Costa Rica and Japan.^[18]

In fall 2025, Yang enrolled in the Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology at the University of Pennsylvania, a dual-degree program combining computer science at the School of Engineering and Applied Science with business at the Wharton School.^[18][2] She is a member of the class of 2029.^[16]

Audemy (2022–present)

Yang founded Audemy in 2022 after a blind classmate named Kelsie, who had lost her vision in third grade, was unable to join a daily Wordle game at their lunch table because the puzzle was entirely visual.^[19][5] Over the following summer, Yang built an audio-based version of Wordle so Kelsie could play.^[7] The project led her to a statistic that shaped the organization's direction: over 70 percent of blind and visually impaired students are at least a grade level behind their peers, largely due to a lack of accessible learning resources.^[18][5]

Yang realized the audio algorithms she had built for the Wordle prototype could be applied to education more broadly.^[18] She expanded Audemy from a single game into a platform of more than 50 AI-powered, screen-free audio games covering math, language arts, coding, and science for students in pre-K through eighth grade.^[1][2] The games use text-to-speech and speech-to-text AI conversion, built in part on Intel's OpenVINO toolkit, to deliver real-time voice feedback without requiring a screen.^[19] The platform has been deployed in every state school for the blind in the United States and has reached more than 200,000 users across 136 countries.^[1][18][20]

Beyond educational games, Audemy developed more than 100 accessibility toolkits enabling blind and visually impaired gamers to access mainstream titles including Minecraft, Roblox, Valorant, and Call of Duty.^[1][10] The organization also launched an Accessibility Studio to help game developers and studios integrate accessibility features into their products.^[1] Forbes noted that only approximately 0.001 percent of game titles are fully accessible to blind players, a gap Audemy's toolkits are designed to address.^[1]

Audemy operates as a nonprofit and has raised over $200,000 in grants and sponsorships from Intel, Google for Nonprofits, the Taco Bell Foundation, Hershey's, Desmos, and Wolfram Alpha.^[2][5] Yang built the organization without traditional venture funding, instead recruiting a global volunteer team of more than 60 engineers, designers, educators, and students.^[19][20] She has described the early scaling process in direct terms: she posted a request for volunteers online and received 30 applications the next day.^[19]

In May 2026, Audemy received a $10,000 prize from OpenAI as part of the inaugural ChatGPT Futures program, which recognized 26 young people ages 18 to 25 for their use of AI.^[3][4] Yang presented Audemy on the main stage at OpenAI headquarters.^[20] She told The Daily Pennsylvanian that ChatGPT had been integrated into Audemy's workflow from the beginning, used for writing grants, writing code, brainstorming, and designing hardware.^[4][20] Yang has stated she plans to use the OpenAI grant to advance Buzzle, a hardware product described as an audio-only gaming console for blind users, currently in the pilot stage.^[4]

alGIRLithm (2022–2025)

Concurrent with her work on Audemy, Yang founded alGIRLithm, a competitive programming contest for high school girls.^[16] She started the organization after competing regularly in Texas programming contests and finding few other girls participating.^[14] Over three years, alGIRLithm grew to more than 400 girls competing annually.^[16] Yang built the contest platform herself using HTML, CSS, and Next.js, contributed 20 problems, and secured cash prizes from technology startups.^[16]

KatyYouthHacks (2022–2025)

Yang co-founded KatyYouthHacks, a hackathon in Katy, Texas, focused on building technology solutions for people with disabilities.^[5] The event grew to attract over 1,300 participants and awarded more than $100,000 in prizes, with judges and speakers from Amazon and Visa.^[5][6]

Research and academic publications (2023–present)

Yang has published three first-author papers at peer-reviewed ACM conferences. Her first paper, "HEARD-LE: An Intelligent Conversational Interface for Wordle," was presented at ACM ICMI 2023 in Paris and described the accessible Wordle prototype that led to Audemy.^[5] A second paper on audiotactile systems for accessible graphs was presented at ACM ICMI 2024 in San José, Costa Rica.^[18] A third paper, "AI for Accessible Education: Personalized Audio-Based Learning for Blind Students," was presented at ACM CHI 2025 in Japan, co-authored with Paul Taele of Texas A&M University.^[18]

Yang was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Games category in December 2025, at age 18.^[1][10] PhillyVoice and Billy Penn identified her as one of the youngest Philly-area honorees in the 2026 class.^[8][17]

In May 2026, she was selected for OpenAI's inaugural ChatGPT Futures class, one of 26 recipients who each received a $10,000 grant.^[3][4] The Wharton School recognized Yang as one of its undergraduate AI leaders in connection with the award.^[20]

In 2024, Yang won the Intel Global AI Impact Festival grand prize in the 13-to-18 age group, receiving an Asus AI PC powered by Intel Core Ultra processors.^[19] That same year, she won the Amazon Breaking Barriers Hackathon, selected from more than 2,000 participants, and received a $5,000 prize.^[19][6]

In 2023, the George H.W. Bush Points of Light Foundation recognized Yang with its Daily Point of Light Award for her volunteer work building Audemy.^[5] Texas Governor Greg Abbott awarded her the Yellow Rose of Texas in 2024 for her contributions to accessible education technology.^[6][13]

In 2025, Yang won the grand prize at the NVIDIA & AWS Agentic AI Hackathon, placing first among approximately 1,900 participants.^[16] She also received a $25,000 Live Más Scholarship from the Taco Bell Foundation^[14] and a $5,000 Grange College Scholarship as one of two inaugural recipients from Katy ISD.^[14]

Yang grew up in Katy, Texas, and relocated to Philadelphia in 2025 to attend the University of Pennsylvania.^[6][18] In addition to computer science, she is an accomplished violist who was named a TMEA All-State musician and won the Texas UIL Chamber Music Competition grand prize with her string quartet.^[16]