Yesterday was the last day of Beyond Tellerand 2018 in Düsseldorf Germany. I was honored to present alongside people like Jens Oliver Meiert, Tracy Osborn, and Miriam Suzanne. I’m still amazed at the thoughtfulness and attention-to-detail that Marc Thiele puts into his events. He truly curates an atmosphere. While I personally favor events that are …
In a few months, I begin my 15th year doing accessibility work and my first year 100% self-employed. As I reflect on the path that brought me here, I’m reminded of so many people who work at accessibility consulting firms that had similar experiences. In 2003-2004 I worked as E-Commerce Manager for NASA Federal Credit …
The greatest happiness of the greatest number is what Jeremy Bentham stated as the goal of Utilitarianism. But this isn’t to say that our goal is simple “pleasure”. John Stuart Mill, for instance, differentiated between “higher pleasures”, which are intellectual and moral, and “lower pleasures”, which are purely physical. In my view, it also implies …
I was recently contacted by a law firm who wanted to hire me to work with them on web accessibility lawsuits. They wanted to hire me to “…perform an initial, more economical review of the site for purposes of us confirming the violations and including within our demand letters”. If you’ve been following me for …
A little over 4 years ago, I joined The Paciello Group and the last 4 years have been nothing short of incredible. At The Paciello Group, I made lifelong friends and got to do great work. TPG was the first place I worked where there was a universal appreciation and respect across the board. Mike …
“Compliance” is a word I’m not a fan of. The reasons are many, but the most important reason is that it puts people into the mindset of “What am I required to do?” vs. “What should I do?” – and the latter mindset is the true path to risk mitigation. When it comes to the …
Over the last 18 months, a handful of law firms in the United States have been sending out demand letters to website owners threatening to sue over web accessibility. The trend for this activity was started by the law firm Carson & Lynch out of Pennsylvania and has gathered enough attention that it has been …
Recently social media has been abuzz regarding an article titled “ITIF: 92% of Top Federal Websites Fail to Meet Security, Speed, Accessibility Standards” – and for good reason. The article cites a study by ITIF which details rampant failings of websites of the US Government. American taxpayers, being both the audience and source of funding …
Frequent readers know I write a lot about the business case for accessibility. In fact, 5 years ago I published a series of posts called Chasing the accessibility business case. The first post in the series outlined the core considerations for building a business case. In general, the value of an effective business case should …
I feel strongly that every person has an intrinsic sense of what is “right” and what is “wrong”. Parents can observe this in their children when they’re very young. Take a toy away from a toddler and the result will be a howling child. Sigmund Freud would identify this as the ‘Id’ in action. The …