When I think of an island, tropical breezes, ocean surf and the warm sun-soaked sand between my toes is usually what comes to mind. Add in a blissful smile from memories of warm island beaches I’ve been fortunate to visit and for me the term island is generally a joyous one. What then you ask do such happy ideas have to do with the term Accessibility Island? Yes, there is much that is joyous about…
3 CommentsThe Idea Place Posts
In my work at Microsoft, I work with a number of product teams on accessibility. One of the rewarding things about this is that I get to learn about a number of technologies and experiences. This is obviously accompanied by working to improve the accessibility and user experiences of these products. I’ve been working with the Power BI team for close to a year and have learned a great deal about the technology. Creating a…
Leave a CommentIn my work at Microsoft, I’ve created a few training resources recently. These have been shared in other arenas but I wanted to share them here as well. The list includes: Creating an Azure Virtual Machine with a Screen Reader A free course with Fable Pathways on Web Development A series of videos on Accessibility Insights, Edge developer tools and Microsoft’s Disability Answer Desk and enterprise Disability Answer Desk
Leave a CommentReading through Twitter today, the following tweet showed up on the timeline of one of the people I follow as a retweet. Doc🐕 – @DocAtCDI: A truck loaded with thousands of copies of Roget’s Thesaurus spilled its load leaving New York Witnesses were stunned, startled, aghast, stupefied, confused, shocked, rattled, paralyzed, dazed, bewildered, surprised, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, confounded, astonished, and numbed. I found the tweet amusing and was going to retweet but noticed it had a…
Leave a CommentIt is unfortunate that it takes landmark agreements far too often for progress on accessibility in the first place. Several years ago Major League Baseball was heralded for their agreement and commitment to accessibility. Progress was indeed made and I know I was one who commented on the agreement and progress. The agreement closing date has long past and so the answer to the question about what happens afterword in their case is, “Unlabeled image…
Leave a CommentAt times I want to capture the audio from VoiceOver on a Mac to illustrate a point or otherwise demonstrate something. This is a bit of a hack but I made an interesting discovery when recording some audio on a Mac computer today. I also know there are 3rd party utilities that make this easier. Although it doesn’t show up in the system input devices when you go to Sound in Mac System Preferences, when…
Leave a CommentRecently I had the opportunity to view a rocket launch. My wife and I were about 13 miles away from NASA’s launchpad at Space View Park in Titusville, Florida. Here is a bit of audio from the launch. I’m not sure how to add captions directly to this file so a bit of a description follows. The audio starts with a fair amount of crowd noise. Someone was playing a live webcast of the launch…
Leave a CommentAs a part of escaping the chilly Wisconsin winter, my wife and I are staying in a rental condo in warmer weather for for the next several weeks. Using the microwave and water dispenser on the refrigerator today I was reminded of the small but significant things when it comes to accessibility that can bring joy. Flat touch screen-like control panels are pretty much universal on kitchen appliances these days. I often find myself playing…
Leave a CommentWhile traveling, I was looking for some over-the-counter medication that I occasionally use. It lead me down one of those rabbit holes you can go down with the Internet. Whether is a loaf of bread, a pair of shoes or the aforementioned over-the-counter medication I was looking for, I’m always amazed at the quantity in terms of both location and maker of products you can purchase here in the United States. Within 2 miles of…
Leave a CommentI have written several times about accessibility problems with Libby and other apps made available from many public libraries from OverDrive. I am overdue in acknowledging some of the progress that has been made on this front. OverDrive has detailed many accessibility improvements to the Libby app in a recent blog post that were made throughout 2021. . The company has further outlined upcoming enhancements users can expect in 2022. The blog post itself is…
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