What is accessibility? I could answer this question by doing a deep-dive into the WCAG guidelines and talk about the four pillars and 50 rules of accessibility, or I could say “Steven Hawking and Stevie Wonder need to be able to use…
The Importance of Disability Employee Resource Groups
Do you bring your “authentic self” to work? Most people with disabilities don’t, especially those with invisible disabilities. Disability ERGs can help with that. First-class relationships are possible only in an atmosphere of total trust. ― Wu Wei, I Ching Life: Becoming…
Nothing Without Us and the Accessible Canada Act
Canada flexes its accessibility superpower muscles by passing the Accessible Canada Act and beginning the campaign “Nothing Without Us” As a Canadian, I couldn’t be prouder of Bill C-81, the Accessible Canada Act: An Act to Ensure a Barrier-free Canada and the “Nothing…
Captioning: It’s Time for a Revolt
What if every person who was deaf, Deaf, had hearing loss (plus those peoples’ friends and family) refused to do business with a company that didn’t caption its videos? I saw an article recently, which identified strategies that business people who don’t…
How the Gig Economy impacts People with Disabilities
Participating in the gig economy is a mixed bag and not even always available to people with disabilities For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last five years, a gig economy engagement is defined…
Stop doing “Walk Throughs” and Start doing “Roll Throughs”
Using a “growth mindset” to understand the point of view of someone with a disability may help you identify issues before there are complaints. There are two types of mindsets according to Dr. Carol Dweck. The first is a fixed…
Make People with Disabilities Part of your Accessibility Testing Program
Do you have an optimal accessibility testing program abilities mix? Let’s say you need surgery. You go to a surgeon in your insurance network. “Sure I can do this surgery,” the surgeon says. “How many times have you done this…
You think there are no people with disabilities in IT? Think again.
Stack Overflow Survey of 90,000 participants shows a significant number of global developers self-identifying with disabilities When you think you are the the only person in a particular situation, it is always hard. The lack of representation is difficult in…
Running Accessible Meetings and Events
A primer to make the lives of participants with disabilities better. As someone in technology with a long-standing mobility problem, I have been to a LOT of meetings. Looking just from the perspective of access, most of them have been…
People with Disabilities — Big Brother Wants to Watch You
You know you are a society in turmoil when there is so much bad news in the political world that this New York Times headline got completely overlooked in the other chaos in New Zealand and with Manafort and Mueller:…