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Are you guilty of “inspiration porn”?
June 5, 2024
Man with prosthetic leg exercising in Gym Inspiration porn is portraying people with disabilities as: inspirational solely or in part on the basis of their...
Are you Disability Compliant? Or Disability Competitive?
June 5, 2024
Disability Compliant is asking people to identify whether they are disabled on a questionnaire anonymously. Disability Competitive is conducting an annual...
Are bad graphical descriptions better than no graphical descriptions to someone with vision loss?
June 5, 2024
Customer service stoplight chart with red sad face, yellow neutral face, and green happy face This is the first part of a two-part article. The second part,...
Are bad captions better than no captions?
June 4, 2024
In the first part of this article, I explored whether bad image descriptions were better than no image descriptions. After consulting with many blind users,...
Applying Ted Lasso management lessons to accessibility
June 4, 2024
Used with permission from https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/originals/ted-lasso/episodes-images/ I am one of a jillion people anxiously awaiting season 3 of Ted...
“Anything else you want to tell us?” is not a valid substitute for “do you need an accommodation?”
June 4, 2024
Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash In the first of two articles I have recently published on accommodations, I addressed what accommodations are. The second...
Answering the question “Are you accessible?”
June 4, 2024
I despise the Museum of Ice Cream. Don’t get me wrong, I *love* ice cream. Anything with chocolate in it, for the win. The more dark chocolate (especially...
An open letter to vendors seeking customers via social media
June 4, 2024
I just passed 10,000 connections on LinkedIn, largely curated around three main areas of subject matter. Not surprisingly to anyone who knows me, these areas...
An award-winning business product that is the opposite of inclusion
June 3, 2024
Q.Workntine pod (photo from Business Insider) On paper, “Q.workntine” is the kind of innovative product people fawn over, and investors throw money at...
An accessibility review of the new Medium site
June 3, 2024
At the beginning of February, Medium launched a new format. I have highlighted Medium’s lack of concern over severe accessibility problems in a previous...
All the Things You Shouldn’t Be Evaluating During Interviews
June 3, 2024
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash There are all kinds of advice on the Internet about things you should be evaluating when you conduct an...
All the reasons you might not have gotten that job
June 3, 2024
Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash Over the last few months, I have spent time mentoring people finding themselves out of work courtesy of COVID-19. Some have...
A Happy Accessibility Article
June 3, 2024
A lot of accessibility articles (mine included) are negative and/or depressing. On any given day, at least half of the articles I see have titles like: How...
Advice for the Aspiring Accessibility Tester / Manager
May 30, 2024
Last updated June 13, 2022Authors note: Coming up on 3 1/2 years of writing on Medium with more than 250,000 reads, I’ve decided to go back and update/clean...
Addressing accessibility requirements in design briefs
May 30, 2024
Photo by Felipe Furtado on Unsplash A design brief is a description of a project and corresponding drawings (comps and wireframes, for example) created by a...
ADA lawsuit costs are WAY more than just the settlement
May 30, 2024
Karl Groves wrote an amazing article this week on the ROI on Accessibility. This is a topic near and dear to my heart and one I am considering for my PhD...
ACR /VPAT Consumption and Production
May 30, 2024
The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) is the premier global advocate for technology, representing the world’s most innovative companies. ITI...
Accessible Social Media
May 30, 2024
Picture of hands swiping on a phone with words representing Friends, Community, Sharing, Blog, Follow, Networking, and icons representing music and email...
Accessibility tools and plugins that designers should be using
May 29, 2024
Designers have their choice of countless tools, many of which are convenient plugins that are integrated with Chrome. If you are a designer and are not...
Accessibility — Separate but Equal is Never OK
May 29, 2024
This week, the US DOT ruled that Scandinavian Airlines’ separate site for people with disabilities was against the DOT’s web accessibility requirements. SAS...
Accessibility Retrospectives
May 29, 2024
Photo by Jakub Gorajek on Unsplash An agile retrospective (sometimes called a post-mortem) is a gathering of interested and involved parties at the end of a...
Accessibility Playlist
May 29, 2024
Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash So like any good tech company, the first thing my co-workers did when we were urged to work from home (I’m based in...
Accessibility Participants, Managers, and Leaders
May 28, 2024
Cartoon man in overalls with four arms in a super hero pose completely laden down with construction tools (screwdrivers, pliers, level, tape measure, trowel,...
Accessibility Micro-coaching
May 28, 2024
Photo by Didssph on Unsplash Ever since the Internet was invented, training and communications trends have centered around getting those materials focused,...
Accessibility Memes
May 28, 2024
https://imgflip.com/i/459gpg When I took a management class at VMware, part of the course was analyzing our “Via Institute on Character” results. Recently,...
Accessibility Job Auditions
May 28, 2024
Photo by Xander Bissell on Unsplash “Job Auditions” — an interview process that includes doing actual work to prove that you CAN do a job before you are...
Accessibility issues that can’t be solved by tech
May 28, 2024
Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash There are two different categories of thought on the WCAG accessibility guidelines: WCAG is a goal, something that one...
Accessibility is not an “add-on” service
May 27, 2024
Every week I get a handful of unsolicited LinkedIn messages from people/companies I’ve never heard of, almost always from outside the US. They claim to be...
Accessibility Interview Questions
May 27, 2024
Man using wheelchair and woman engaging in conversation in a business setting So, you got permission to bring an accessibility subject matter expert on...
Accessibility Fail Fast Testing Prep
May 27, 2024
4 black and white cartoon drawings of people falling — off a ladder, slipping on a floor, off a flight of stairs, and off a curb It was Thomas Edison who...
Accessibility Fail Fast — Execution
May 27, 2024
Part one is located here Accessibility Fail Fast Step 1: A smoke test using an automated accessibility test suite A smoke test is a non-exhaustive set of...
Accessibility Debt — What is it? How to pay it off ???
May 27, 2024
Cartoon young man kicking a can The accessibility paradigm shift from “yeah, eventually” to being included as part of “business as usual” usually derives...
Accessibility Checklists — Just say No
May 25, 2024
Checklist with Yes and No Options, red pencil, X in “no” checkbox I am an Accessibility Manager with 15 years of experience. No more general A11Y Checklists,...
Accessibility Charlatans
May 25, 2024
Many IT and diversity/inclusion professionals are now advertising themselves as digital accessibility subject matter experts without any relevant credentials...
Accessibility certifications: separating what IS good from what just sounds good
May 25, 2024
Certification is: a standardized method with a formal processthat individuals use to demonstrate that they are qualified at a specific level in particular...
Accessibility Bingo
May 25, 2024
Do you know that conference call Bingo meme? I adapted it for accessibility :-) I picked the 25 most annoying and impactful #AccessibilityFail behaviors that...
Accessibility best practices for screenreader testing
May 25, 2024
Chart from WebAIM survey #8 https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey8/ Chart description: The results of the annual WebAIM survey from 2019 shows the...
This week in accessibility: NFB v. EPIC
May 24, 2024
Recently, a Massachusetts district court decided in favor of a defendant who sold inaccessible software and dismissed a suit against them that was filed by...
This week in accessibility: Robles v. Domino’s
May 24, 2024
A network signal icon constructed from cartoon pepperoni pizza This week in Accessibility: Robles v. Domino’s The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals came out with...
This Week in Accessibility: The latest in the multi-year Harvard/MIT closed captioning saga
May 24, 2024
Video window displaying beige cartoon female cartoon and Video window displaying beige cartoon female cartoon and automatically-generated caption “amber...
This Week in Accessibility: What we can learn from the “WebAIM Million”
May 24, 2024
A human hand reaching out being drowned in a sea of pages Summary of an accessibility analysis of the top 1,000,000 home pages This week being the syzygy of...
This Week in Accessibility: White v. Square
May 24, 2024
Cartoon iphone with “Payment $25 Accept/Decline” and a credit card and payment device connected at the top It’s not an accessibility case. White is a...
To Disclose, or not to Disclose
May 23, 2024
This article is not legal advice. If you have questions about how disclosing a disability can impact you legally, ask your attorney, who is most definitely...
Top 10 disability and accessibility TED talks and Videos
May 23, 2024
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash I get pinged a lot by people asking for accessibility resources. Some accessibility resources are easy to find because they...
Toxic Positivity and Disabilities
May 23, 2024
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash My friend Debbie Levitt wrote an article about COVID-19 spam. I’ve only known Debbie for a few months, but our views on...
Transitioning from being a manager to an individual contributor
May 23, 2024
Nine months ago, I was presented with a choice. My job responsibilities had grown beyond the ability of one person to manage the role. Even though I thought...
Twitter and Inaccessible “Voice Notes”
May 23, 2024
Photo by Yucel Moran on Unsplash Once upon a time (in tech, this is maybe 2–3 years ago), Twitter actually cared about accessibility. For a while, they were...
Uber, CVS, and Rite Aid in the news over disability discrimination
May 22, 2024
Photo by Nijwam Swargiary on Unsplash Rite Aid settled a case last week with the Department of Justice, which required them to make their COVID portal and...
Using plain language is essential for content accessibility
May 22, 2024
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash When writing for your audience, it’s essential to keep things simple at the lowest common denominator for your audience. If...
Vetting accessibility vendors
May 22, 2024
It used to be there were just a handful of major accessibility vendors in the game. SSB Bart Group (now Level Access), Deque, and Cryptzone (now Cyxtera) And...
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