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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…
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Hello World
This isn’t an easy post for me to write. I hadn’t planned on writing it yet, but then on October 2nd, 2015 I gave a talk and while I knew what is in my slides, I didn’t realize I was outing myself while I was speaking. I guess I was just in the zone. This…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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Contributing to In Her Room Podcast
My friend, Sara Blackthorne, has been running a podcast for over 6 months now. She has 25 weekly episodes under her belt at In Her Room where she holds “meaningful conversation with women writers from around the world” (she is a much better writer than me, so I’ll use her words) and it is all…
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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…
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Human Operating Systems
When I speak with people about my chronic illness, there is often confusion on it. Many people think, “your pain [or dizziness] is just in your head” and that I can just let it go or ignore it. Yes, my disabilities are invisible, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t very real. When we meet people…
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On Depression
Society has many ills. People are fallible and get themselves addicted to unhealthy things all the time. It may be overeating, under-eating, gambling, alcohol, or drugs, but each of these people is dealing with a pain that their particular addiction gives a little bit of relief from. We recognize that these addictions are diseases; we…