October 2020 - Sheri Byrne-Haber's Blog

Two cartoon individuals reviewing individuals digital profiles

Received an accommodations request? Think twice before turning it down.

This is Part 2 of a two-part article. Read Part 1, The Manager’s Practical Guide to Handling an Employee Newly Diagnosed With a Disability here. What are accommodations? An “accommodations request” is as simple as an individual communicating the following type…

green clock with time to rise the bar background

Your first attempt at making anything accessible will be awful

Don’t use this as an excuse. Even awful is better than 98 % of what other people are doing. My primary goal in life is to convince people to make things accessible, which is defined as making products and services…

Greg Abbot, Governor of Texas at news conference at the end of September 2020

How people with disabilities can be ableist

TL;DR: They internalize the dominant paradigm: abled is good, disabled is bad. Exhibit #1: Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott Greg Abbott is a wheelchair user, only the third wheelchair-using governor in United States history. What happened that caused him to…

Pad of paper with empty “this week” tear sheets on them.

Organizations with $33 Billion in annual revenue were sued over accessibility in one week last month

2020 accessibility lawsuits are on track to be close to 50 % higher than either 2018 or 2019. This article reviews a single week’s worth of those lawsuits. PACER is the go-to tool for lawyers wanting information about the status…

Screenshot of Sheri Byrne-Haber’s Medium homepage at http://sheribyrnehaber.medium.com

An open letter to the Medium powers-that-be on accessibility

The new design changes are pretty, but the experience for people with disabilities using assistive technology is still quite poor, especially for authors. Accessibility is the ability of people with disabilities to use software or consume information equally to people…

Ruptured pipeline labeled “Candidate Pipeline”. Where the oil is spilling out “Underrepresented Minorities”

Can’t Find Underrepresented Minorities for Tech Jobs?

Suggestions to reframe that always-erroneous statement and steps organizations can take to combat workplace -isms. At the end of September, the CEO of Wells Fargo publicly stated the following: “he unfortunate reality,” he wrote, echoing comments he had made on a video…

Graffiti-like art mural with bright colors spelling out the word Stress

The Accessibility Profession Can Be Stressful, Exhausting, and Frustrating.

Stress and adversity are standard for people who have chosen accessibility careers. When you add in being disabled, that is a double whammy. This is the first of a two-part article. I have seen zero articles on coping with being…

Word/image cloud w/ Payroll in the center. Taxes bonuses salaries holiday pay withholding tips social security also mentioned

More lawsuits filed against companies using accessibility plugin/overlays

ADP has been sued for inaccessibility despite using a popular overlay. The rest of the cases involving overlays have been small potatoes by comparison. I am predicting thatSF Lighthouse for the Blind v. ADP will be to overlays what the Domino’s case was…

Man looking scared w/ hands covering his face w/ thought bubble containing words like headache, anxiety, pain, tired, distress

The Manager’s Practical Guide to Handling an Employee Newly Diagnosed With a Disability

Most disabilities are acquired, not congenital. Helping employees adjust to having a disability is not just a kindness; it is legally required. This is part 1 of a three-part series. Part two will be on the interactive process. This article…

On hitting 1000 Medium followers

It took me 22 months, 159 articles, and 195 comments on other people’s articles. But am I getting anything meaningful out of it? Who Am I? Sheri Byrne-Haber — mother of three wonderful daughters (one of whom has congenital progressive…

Month: October 2020