-
Joining a New Team of Accessibility Professionals
The last two and half months have been quite an adventure. During this time I applied to work with over 50 companies. I conducted interviews with 28 of them. I went to multiple rounds of interviews with a dozen; and 8 went as far as doing whatever the company used as a technical gauge or…
-
How to Write About Accessibility
Over the last year or so, there have been a lot of people starting to take accessibility seriously, which I love. Accessibility is showing up in blog posts, Github repos, frameworks, and styleguides. But sometimes the way they write about it minimizes the impact that a disability can have on an individual trying to get…
-
Open Letter to Stewart Butterfield
Yesterday, Stewart Butterfield of Slack emailed his team letting them know that the San Francisco office would be closed in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I think this is brilliant. He makes a good case for why more companies should be closed and we need to continue the fight for civil rights. These…
-
You Need Accessibility Testing
This probably isn’t the first time you’ve heard it. Somewhere along the line somebody asked you how well your site or application works for people that are blind. You probably mumbled something along, “They don’t use our stuff,” or maybe, “I don’t know, does it matter?” The short answer is, yes it matters. And you…
-
My Open Source & Feelings Talk is on Video Now
If you couldn’t make it to Open Source & Feelings, and I think a few people missed it—don’t make this mistake next year, I gave a talk on Designing with Empathy which you can read or watch the video of below. Thanks to Confreaks for taping this.
-
Designing with Empathy
This weekend I had the pleasure of speaking at the inaugural edition of Open Source & Feelings. It was an amazing conference tackling some really hard topics. I received really great feedback from the audience on my “Designing with Empathy” talk and several asked for the transcript as they couldn’t take notes fast enough. So…
-
Granting the User Control
More than once I have spoken about giving the user control over their experience. Too often we make assumptions about how things should work, but in the end those assumptions always forget someone. Providing a set of tools for the user to control the situation or experience allows us to have the most rich and…
-
Presenting Designing With Empathy at OSFeels
I’ve been working on a new talk called “Designing with Empathy” that covers a little more than accessibility, but addresses the needs of those using assistive technology as well as those who have difficulty with technology. We all carry biases with us and when we build new sites, tools, apps, or games those biases leak…
-
Infinite Canvas 6 With Rachel Nabors
Last week I got to be on a podcast. This week I appear on a screencast with Rachel Nabors talking about vestibular disorders in general and how animation may affect a user on your site. If you don’t know who Rachel is, she is an amazing illustrator, cartoonist, speaker and animator using all those skills…
-
I’m on CtrlClickCast Podcast Episode 49
Last fall I met the great hosts of CtrlClickCast at CSSDevConf and they were gracious enough to invite me on the show. I got together with Lea & Emily last week and recorded an episode on Accessibility. It was super fun! I hope to do more podcasts (but I need a better mic!).