Last week I encountered a pseudo 3D animated gif from Doritos that autoplayed while viewing my Twitter feed. This gif was brightly colored, and its “3D” effect triggered a vestibular attack and migraine. As I looked more into the issue, it isn’t just Twitter who does this. It also happens in our Instagram, Vine, Facebook, and Snapchat feeds, just to name a few. Now some of you will tell me, “those channels are meant to work that way.” True, but what if due to advertising, or worse hacking, someone uploaded a gif worse than this Doritos one that autoplayed and triggered a photosensitive epileptic seizure? Who is responsible?
Category Archives: Accessibility
Apple Watch Emergency Alerts?
I live with a person who has a very severe allergy to fish and shellfish. So much so that going out to dinner is extremely hard. She carries an epipen in case she is exposed, and it can be as little exposure as walking into a restaurant having a fish fry. I have malignant hyperthermia, an extreme reaction to anesthetics. It’s genetic and my kids have it from both parents. My father has a pacemaker. For us, one of the coolest things to happen in iOS 8 was the ability to add the “Emergency” information, including links to call an emergency contact to the lock screen of the iPhone.
That got Sara and I thinking, what could we do with an Apple Watch?
CodePaLousa Accessibility Resources
Thanks to everyone who came out to my talk UX of Stairs this morning. It was a really great crowd. there were a number of great questions and I mentioned some really good tools and resources, but I didn’t have the URLs on slides. Here is a list mentioned in the talk as well as in some conversations I had afterwards. And if you missed my talk, you can catch a version of it here.
9th Circuit Court Accessibility Ruling
The news just broke that the 9th Circuit court has ruled on two cases with major consequences to the internet, how it is built, and how people use it. The rulings are a huge mistake in interpretation of the law and should be appealed immediately. However, work is currently being done to improve the Americans with Disabilities Act that would in fact make these rulings moot. The question is, which will happen first? Whether it is an updated ADA or appeals, it is still not soon enough for people with disabilities.
A Word on Color
Over the weekend, there has been a lot of buzz about ‘the dress’ and whether it is blue and black, or white and gold. The reality of the dress is that due to white balance in the camera, lighting conditions and the fact that everybody perceives color a little differently the true color of the dress can not be known from that single photo. But it is this last piece I want to talk about today.
Section 508 Rule Updates
The United States Access Board has just released details on how they plan on updating Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as well as guidelines for Section 255 of the Communications Act of 1934. These updates will have major impacts to people providing technology and telecommunication solutions to government entities and their subcontractors. They are open to public comment for the next 90 days.
People Driven Develeopment
As a developer, I hear terms like behavior driven development and test driven development being used constantly. And these are good methods for building software. The concept being you establish an expected behavior of your software and write testing scenarios to prove your software meets that behavior.
MidwestUX – UX of Stairs
I took a little time off from speaking due to the new job and how difficult it was to gauge my abilities given my diagnosis of Chronic Subjective Dizziness (more commonly known as forever having vertigo without a reason). But this summer as I became more aware of my abilities and the story I have to tell, I started up again.
Single Payer Healthcare
I’m pretty lucky. I have a solid career and reliable income. I also have health insurance through my employer, unlike millions of other Americans. However, something happened this week that scared the hell out of me. I caught pneumonia.
Learning to Let Go
In the Beginning…
For ten years I have been dealing with chronic pain in the form of daily, debilitating migraines. Unlike some people who get migraines every couple of months that may last a few hours to a few days, my migraines show up every. They come in swaths of anywhere from as few as three and up to as many as eighteen in a single day and they would last from 15 minutes to three hours.