The Interconnected

An accessibility specialist named Michelle P. posted this on one of the Slack boards I use. She gave me permission to repost it.

Person to vendor: How close are you to automating screen reader testing?

Me, on the call: There’s no such thing, screen reader testing and automated testing don’t work like that.

Person, to me: I want to see how close they are.

Me: There is no close, it doesn’t exist and no one can claim it exists. It’s like asking how close we are to automating your own personal eye exam results without you physically being there.

Every screen reader user will use the system differently. Every screen reader behaves differently — there’s no “Jeffrey Zeldman of screen readers” to help muscle all of the screen readers to behave the same way. And every browser that you use with a screen reader is also going to behave differently.

And I just love the metaphor about the eye exam so much.

This is the blanket that I’ve had on my bed mostly continuously since I was born, fifty years ago. It is 50 years old. My mom made it. Once upon a time, it had Holly Hobbie and her friends printed on it, but they have long since worn off. As a kid, this covered my … Continue reading “On 50 years”

I grew up in eastern Oklahoma, and it surprises a few people that mining was a part of my family’s, and eastern Oklahoma’s, history. My great great grandfather emigrated from Yorkshire to the coal mines of southeastern Oklahoma, a place so prosperous they had interurban train lines, brick streets, and minor league baseball teams. The … Continue reading “What will the AI Boom leave behind?”