Stairs make the building inaccessible, not the wheelchair.
In August 2021, as I approached my 50th birthday, I kept having the thought, “I need a year off.” I was tired and unmotivated. Restless. With three years of sobriety, I was evolving. Healing. I talked with my manager at the time and we decided I would take three months of leave to see ifContinue reading Gap year: Part 1 of n?
Yesterday, I wept to my therapist, “I am falling apart.” “Falling apart or transforming?” She asked. In my mind, an image of a bud and the realization that to a bud, blooming feels like falling apart and that I am embodying Anais Nin’s words: “And then the day came,when the riskto remain tightin a budwasContinue reading Falling?
This morning, I had the pleasure of helping to kick off Knowbility’s John Slatin AccessU with a conversation with Sharron Rush and Lainey Feingold, “Honoring Wisdom, Embracing Change: A Conversation about Eldering in the Accessibility Community.” Towards the end of the session I read a revised version of a poem I first read at theContinue reading Ode to Accessibility Communities
A few weeks ago I tweeted: Folks with low vision: what screen size and resolution do you use? Do you use browser zoom? If yes, what %? — Wendy Chisholm (@wendyabc) May 22, 2017 I received a bunch of great responses. Thank you. Since people were using different screen resolutions and zoom levels, we tookContinue reading Screen size, resolution and zoom. Oh my.
In preparation for Burning Man 2013, I printed 100 copies of a book of poetry and short stories that I had written during the previous 10 years. In the last few weeks, I’ve been drafting blog posts to start sharing those poems as well as new ones. I had hoped to finish a poem about tenacityContinue reading Towards the light
I haven’t blogged in a while. For the last seven years, I’ve been on an inward journey. Healing, evolving, growing. This may be me reemerging, I don’t know. I do know that I’ve survived trauma and the world is so full of it right now. And for some reason, I feel moved to talk aboutContinue reading Surviving trauma: reclaiming my voice
I had so much fun delivering a keynote at OSCON a few days ago, “Introvert? Extrovert? Klingon? We’ve got you covered.” I enjoyed the hallway conversations afterward, the Facebook comments, the email and the tweets. It’s wonderful to know that I’ve said something that someone else identifies with, that in some way may shift their perspective. It’s beenContinue reading Backstage
I had a great lunch with Dylan on Friday and he tweeted afterward: “UX and accessibility both have empathy as a core value. So why don’t UX and #a11y work together more?” Empathy is “the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.” Yet many designers and developers whoContinue reading Empathy
For the last week, I’ve been assimilating the ideas that I gleaned from the mind melds at CSUN. I asked as many people as I could, “How do you do your work?” I am often in a state of panic with my work, that I’m not working fast enough. Intellectually, I know that to move fromContinue reading Divine Discontent
I have recently become glued to my computer monitor as the latest reality show “HTML 5” unfolds. Here’s my take on where things are and where I hope they are going. On the surface the discussion is about elements, attributes and apis, but at its heart it is about everyone’s ability to participate in the future society that will be based on these technologies.