Accessibility strategist, speaker, and consultant
My friend John Allsopp built an open live feed for AI agents at AI Engineer Melbourne, so I sent my agent, Ellis, in my place. It recaps each talk, then does the part I wanted to see: its own questions, and strange connections to fields like immunology and contract law. Here's where it ran.
The productivity trap in coding with an AI: you finish faster but maybe understand less. Here's the instruction set I'm experimenting with to make the LLM my learning partner via pair-programming.
Six patterns from 80 voice-mode conversations, how my use shifted from quick hits to structured huddles, and the habit I'm encoding into accessibility tools.
Thoughts and reflections on some principles that help create conditions for great accessibility work
Tools I've used in my tech life that help my son in school
How I learned to better collaborate with AI.
In order to be more inclusive as teachers, presenters, speakers, facilitators (and a long list of other things we do in life where we communicate), we need to develop the skill of audio describing our own presentations.
Just finished reading Ignore Everybody from Hugh MacLeod. Here's my takeaways.
The meaning of shift left has changed over time. That change is good, and better for long-term sustainability when it comes to accessibility.
This is (at least in part) what intentional inclusion looks like.
Passages that make me say YES!!! from Hugh MacLeod's book Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity
In which we better understand what it means to be purposeful with respect to accessibility.
I'm going to try something different for reading in 2021.
Cleaning out the office and I found a piece of paper that is 47 years old.
I'm trying out Notion as an all-in-one planner and productivity app. Here's a very boring write up of Day 1. I actually wrote it in Notion and then exported as Markdown and here we are, publishing easily on my site.
Here's a little bit about how my perspective on accessibility has changed over time.
I learned CSS a long time ago. It's time for an upgrade.
I learned a few new tricks with Zoom over the past couple of weeks in our house, with everyone here under quarantine. They're pretty cool.
I've been teaching a remote, hands-on workshop and here are my quick thoughts on how it has gone, and what I've learned.
Yes, there's lots of remote working tips and tricks out there, but this is the stuff nobody will ever tell you. I certainly didn't tell you these things.
Here's some ways you can start speaking.
I ran a remote team for 7 years and here's some things we did that remote work feel right.
Learning Gatsby means learning React and GraphQL, and I'm ok with that. Here's some things I've learned so far.
Thoughts and musings two years after we became part of Level Access.
I worked up to building a pull out drawer in the cabinet under our kitchen island. Here's what I learned.
I've been fixing one small thing in my house/life each day in 2020. Here's how it's going so far
Taking FOBI into my own hands
I had a 537 day streak of doing the wrong thing.
Lessons and insights after tracking my time for 24 hrs a day for 6 weeks.
We didn't know, but he did, and he should've told us.
What does a change of pace really mean when you're teaching a workshop?
Bullet points aren't about what you put on the slide.
As you launch into a new year, begin with the end in mind. Where will you be in December? What will you have accomplished?
What does it take to make something accessible to everyone? Join me on both the journey and the destination of accessibility, with tips for what you might need for the adventures ahead.
Explicit, implicit, content-based: the three kinds of relationships on a page that decide whether assistive technology users can actually navigate it.
Three simple things you can do to improve keyboard accessibility in your web page or application. Think links and buttons, focus and source order.
Automated infinite scrolling is a popular web design technique even though it creates difficult accessibility problems for keyboard users.
There's an emotional aspect to accessibility that makes it difficult to determine exactly how we should design for a particular persona.
In the physical world, it is nearly impossible to make a fixed object accessible to everyone. In the connected world of the Internet of Things, digital brings us accessibility where the physical can’t.
Infographics are growing in popularity, but they are often criticized for the accessibility challenges they create. Here’s an infographic that was very surprising when it comes to accessibility, and we felt it should be celebrated and shared as a positive—a small thing, done well.
I couldn’t put my finger on what was missing in our work until these three things happened all at once: we dove deep into the process of redesigning our web site and brand identity, reviewed 2013 successes and failures, and started planning for 2014. Doing all of that work forced us to ask questions about who we are and what we believe in.
Good alt text is seen as critical for people that use screen readers. But it doesn’t stop there. We need to consider the effect of alt text on people that also rely on good, accurate alt text: people that use voice recognition software.
A flawed design coded perfectly is just as bad as a brilliant design coded poorly. Accessibility needs both sides of the build, not one or the other.
Important accessibility details get lost in the handoff from design to code. The fix is mixed-role conversations, not more meetings.
Accessibility doesn't have to cost a lot, but here are some sure-fire methods to ensure that you pay more than you need to.
Sometimes we're blindfolded, even to our own actions.
Disability and the concept of accessibility can be confusing. Awkward. Uncomfortable. The first step to true understanding is usually awareness. Awareness helps you get over those feelings: awareness that issues exist, awareness that there are solutions to those issues, and awareness that what we do as web professionals can have a profound impact on someone else's life.
Adding accessibility to your work can feel like everything-at-once. Start with one thing in your current role and you are already doing better work.
Organizations grow over time. Their understanding of accessibility and their attitude towards it change too. Have you seen these five stages of accessibility where you work?
Most QA covers correct and incorrect input. The transition from incorrect to correct is where users with disabilities get stuck. Test that path too.