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Spent much of the past few days sheltering from the European heatwave which hit London over the past week. Managed to battle through it working from home and taking heed of the do not travel advice from Transport for London and the train companies. Bagheera the cat was struggling with the heat too, making the most of her cool mat and lying on anything remotely cool like the coffee table. Last weekend, went for a very long walk with my friend Rishee along the Grand Union Canal from Little Venice…
Picked up my new laptop for work at the office this week. A new MacBook Pro, but with much more restrictive settings and a throttled internet connection that's constantly monitored and filtered. Ventured out to my old university in West London on Thursday evening to visit Made in Brunel Graduate Showcase. A shadow of its former self, with a just a single space on campus of mostly domestic students showcasing their work. No longer in a Central London venue and no longer a packed schedule of…
For my birthday we headed to Prague last weekend for a relaxing five night stay. It was our first visit to the city and to Czechia . Weather was mostly warm and pleasant throughout. The old town is mostly pedestrianised and free of traffic, so quiet and pleasant to walk throughout. We stayed localy at a fairly average and somewhat dated hotel. There was no air condition, so rather stuffy in the room and some rather unfriendly breakfast room staff, but it was nevetheless a comfortable stay. An…
Wednesday I attended a11y Together for some talks on accessibility, and Thursday the Global Accessibility Awareness Day official meeting with its founders from the USA, both in Central London. Joined Mena for my second session of Pilates on Saturday. This time was much more challenging and I'm still feeling it in my biceps two days later! Ventured over to Victoria Park in East London to meet my Canadian friend for the last time in what will probably be years, since he's moving back to Toronto…
This year I haven’t had much time or mental energy to write a full article or prepare a talk in time for Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). Accessibility isn’t something I think about once a year, it’s my job, and it’s what matters to me. I want to help make the web a more accessible place for everyone, applying and advocating for inclusive design principles whenever and wherever I can. For me pretty much every day is about accessibility awareness Most days I see accessibility barriers…
Last weekend was rather busy and somewhat stressful, preparing my apartment for photos to go on the market. Lots of cleaning up and decluttering but happy with the result and now have some great photos. Not often out in town on Monday evenings, but made it along to a book launch event in Shoreditch for Lisa Riemers' Accessible Communications book. Chatted to a few familiar faces and stayed for the main presentation before heading home. After three months of pre-sale work and delays getting the…
Arrived early evening in Como on Wednesday evening after a scenic train trip from Zurich onboard one of the fancy new-ish Giruno trains. Stayed at a pleasant Airbnb located just outside the city walls so quiet and great value. On my first day in Como I explored the city and took in the sights and enjoy freshly prepared Italian coffee. Wasted time queuing for next-day boat tickets, only to find a small sign near the sales booth stating that only same-day sales were allowed. I'd tried online…
A positive start to the week with news that SDinGovaccepted my talk proposal on accessibility debt. Now the hard work begins of preparing it. Happy to be returning to Edinburgh in September again and to attend this conference for the full length this time, plus the morning after to spend in the city winding down. A sad farewell to my Canadian colleague on Thursday who left after seven years at GDS in order to return to Toronto. On TV/streaming, enjoying Michael Portillo's new Great Japanese…
Easter Monday I spent the day with Bagheera the cat relaxing after a busy weekend of visiting places. She's taken a liking to a specific cushion which I momentarily placed on its base and ever since claimed it as her favourite sleeping spot on the sofa. Tuesday night I really didn't sleep well with Trump's threat that a whole civilization would die if his demands weren't met. Week by week, as bombings continue across Iran, Lebanon, and beyond in Ukraine too, our hopes of any kind of economic...
Somewhat pleasing news last week at work that the transition to Microsoft from Google for all our office apps, meets and email has been postponed for a few more weeks. Taking advantage of the long weekend over Easter I joined my friend for pizza, four years since we started the ritual of eating out only at pizza restaurants. We booked a couple of top-rated London places. For lunch we headed to Carmela's in Islington to have New York style pizza. Good crisp pizza base with a decent mozzarella...
The annual report on the accessibility of the top million home pages was just published by WebAIM, and it’s as bleak as I expected. Detectable errors are getting worse, whilst the issues we can’t automatically detect are likely just as bad if not worse than before. Only manual testing and real user testing can show the full picture of how many barriers people still face on the web. We’re not even getting the basics right for a more accessible web Detected errors increase a whopping 10.1% sinc...
Last week was Neurodiversity Celebration Week. At work there was a series of talks and discussions on different types of neurodivergence. I only managed to attend the one on Autism and made a little contribution. All positive vibes in the sessions and great that our organisation's neurodiversity network managed to do this. Midweek I attended the second a11y Together meetup after work. It was a smaller crowd this time round, but a much better venue with less noise. The talks were great, inclu...
Last week I attended Web Day Out in Brighton. It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these conference reviews, but here we go — especially as this one was new, and I feel the urge to champion it in the hope it returns for years to come. I had a pleasant time, even if early‑spring Brighton felt more like midwinter without the sunshine. What You Can Do Without JavaScript I do far less coding now than I did ten years ago, but it was refreshing to hear from Jemima Abu about what’s possible u...
