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With all due respect

Categorized Under: Disability Published on Authored by 2 Comments

Yesterday I had an interaction I seem to have much too often to pass on not writing about any longer. You know, when a certain brand of folk who are convinced they know what I need and want more than I do. Almost like I cannot possess the capacity to help myself? The notion that I don’t, for whatever reason, have my best interests at heart is completely lost on these types.

But yesterday was a bit different than the many other times this sort of bullshit has happened, and I want to be careful. What happened strays heavily into the territory of faith and God. But I’d rather avoid conflating what happened with my thoughts toward either. Those who know me, know what I think on the matter. Those who don’t, just trust me, it’s not relevant to this conversation.

The interaction started when a curious party started asking a friend who I was talking with rather probing questions about me and my disability. Now said party isn’t a stranger to me, by any means. However, this person has never thought too far past themselves to engage me on matters pertaining to me. Especially considering the fact this person felt the need to go around me to get what they wanted — information. Even if it meant not treating me like a thinking, feeling human being. It’d seem little else mattered. Read “With all due respect” in its entirety

The Split Tap

Categorized Under: Adaptability, Technology Published on Authored by Leave a comment

An interested party left a comment on a post I wrote back in November of last year, called The frustrations of VoiceOver. The commenter wondered if the situation I described in said post was the same for VoiceOver in Safari on iOS (meaning on both the iPhone and iPad). Problem being, I had a one helluva time testing the “bug” with VoiceOver on iOS.

Long, and somewhat uninteresting (for the scope of this piece, at least), story short, I was able to clear the biggest impediment I had toward testing this quirk in iOS yesterday. How do I even turn VoiceOver on to test? It, as in iOS, will not recognize my double taps when it asks for confirmation for turning VoiceOver on. “Is this really what you want to do? iOS’s gestures change when VoiceOver is turned on” (I’m quoting from memory, it’s more than likely that isn’t what it says). So I put a call out on Twitter asking how I might overcome this.

Although the solution isn’t all the intuitive to discover on one’s own, that doesn’t necessarily make any solution any less liberating or powerful. Read “The Split Tap” in its entirety

Defining focus

Categorized Under: Adaptability, CSS Published on Authored by Leave a comment

When I wrote Regaining focus I figured, from my past experience using user defined style sheets, things would be as straight forward as I remembered them being. Why isn’t anything as simple as the utility demands? And for the record, I know relying on memory alone is largely a sloppy move to make. And I hope to correct myself with this post today.

But I didn’t fully realize my error until I went to write up the README for a Github repository I wrote for a solution for such a problem. Using the bit of code I provided in my post I linked to above, I wrote a style sheet (FOCUS.css) that would provide a user the same experience in the same browser from one site to another.

The problem being the ways to implement user defined focus styles vary quite a bit from browser to browser. From easy to complicated. Read “Defining focus” in its entirety

Some shortcomings in Assistive Technology?

Categorized Under: Technology Published on Authored by Leave a comment

Earlier this week Aaron Gustafson turned me onto an accessibility feature in Google+. In your “Settings” Goggle+ gives you the option to turn on “Accessibility,” to “change the presentation of some pages to work better with screen readers and other assistive tools.”

A noble goal towards inclusivity. But one thing unfortunately sticks out for me, why is this even an option? And an option a user must opt into?

Turns out the reason wasn’t as misguided as I first thought. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still totally counterproductive — accommodating what they’ve already implemented to meet a goal that would be better served if Google strove for this goal up front? 1 But, I guess, effort is being made to provide people the support they might need to better their experience. My “complaint” should be taken with a grain of salt. It could be worse. But at the same time, it it should be much better. Read “Some shortcomings in Assistive Technology?” in its entirety

Regaining focus

Categorized Under: Adaptability, CSS Published on Authored by Leave a comment

During the latter part of this past week, I performed an accessibility “audit” for an organization I’ve done this type of work for in the past and unfortunately haven’t done much for in recent months. It feels good to be at it again.

And the web developer’s work I was evaluating was missing one of the most basic concepts of accessible web design. They removed the focus indicator from their links. I thought I’d share how I got around this potential show stopper with a little browser feature I’ve had to use possibly a couple other times for situations not quite as serious as this proved to be, but I think this will be worth the effort.

But before I drone on, it seems this needs to be said at least one more time. You really should avoid removing the focus indicator from web sites. Now I understand why one would do it. In some browsers the outline shows when you click on a link and that complicates certain aesthetic goals. And there are ways around this (largely).

But, as the link above demonstrates, this isn’t a new concern. This is merely me taking my sweet ass time at getting to a point. Which isn’t my main point, bear with me, I’ll get there. Revisiting practices that have since passed “pressing” relevancy can sometimes help your current processes. Take my “audit” this past week as a perfect example. Read “Regaining focus” in its entirety

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