I am an author and strategist who has pushed to make the world more equitable since 1995. I co-wrote “Universal Design for Web Applications” with Matt May (O’Reilly, 2008) and edited Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and 2.0. I have appeared as Wonder Woman in a web comic with the other HTML5 Super Friends and as myself at Ignite Seattle. In 2014, I gave a short keynote at OSCON, “Introvert? Extrovert? Klingon? We’ve got you covered.”
In January 2022, I started a gap year with the intent of minimizing stress and maximizing spontaneity, joy, and creativity. My purpose this year is to be curious; to practice presence and embodiment.
Until 2021, I worked as a Principal Accessibility Architect at Microsoft, leading the strategy and managing the investment portfolio for AI for Accessibility–a $25 million grant program to accelerate the development of accessible and intelligent AI solutions to amplify human capability for the more than 1 billion people worldwide with a disability. Before that, I helped start the infusion of accessibility throughout Microsoft’s internal engineering systems; worked to make Visual Studio Team Services more accessible; shepherded Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and 2.0. as staff for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); helped the University of Washington’s AccessComputing project increase the number of people with disabilities in computing fields; contributed to the development of WebAnywhere–a screen reader on the go; and independently consulted for companies including Microsoft, Google, and Adobe to integrate universal design into their products and as a consultant for the American Foundation for the Blind. I have a B.S. in Computer Science and M.S. in Industrial Engineering/Human Factors.
Hi Wendy,
Thanks for this book. I’m enjoying the read.
I’ve a question, however. On page 101, you write: “If you can live with UDM4’s licensing regime, it’s a good product and can save you a lot of time. But […] So we wrote an open source menu script of our own, which you can download at http://ud4wa.com.”
I’ve looked for this menu script both on ud4wa.com and the book’s O’Reilly site but to no avail.
Can you please point me to where this script can be downloaded
Thanks a lot
Bill
Bill,
I’m glad you’re enjoying the book.
I just published Open source menus and code on the ud4wa site. This gives pointers to the YUI and Dojo libraries–which are far more comprehensive than anything we could write on our own.
Thank you,
–wendy
Hi,
Heard your interview on KUOW on 7-25-09 and it was good to hear this topic being discussed. Regarding your book, I was wondering if, along with the Universal Design topics, do you cover the area of information management? One thing I’ve noticed with our aging population is the difficulty of finding things on their computers. They may be able to navigate a site just fine, but when it comes to information retrieval and organization, this becomes a serious issue (perhaps memory loss, etc.). Setting up mnemonic assistants or similar seems it would be part of a good accessibility design.
Your thoughts appreciated,
Rob
Rob: Sorry it took me so long to comment.
I’m glad you like the interview. We don’t specifically cover information retrieval and organization in the book, except that using principles of universal design usually makes information easier to find with search engines.
Mnemonic assistants are likely to help everyone and in that case are good universal design. This is what I like about universal design, oftentimes when you design to make something easier to use or easier to understand for a particular population, it often makes it easier to use or understand for everyone.
So, if you end up using some mnemonic devices on your site, let me know. It would be interesting to see if more people find it easier to use.