The American Foundation for the Blind is using the scenario of the lone, overworked, harried accessibility expert as a marketing prop for its own accessibility consulting service at this year’s AFB Leadership conference, and I have some thoughts. This is maybe a half a level above selling an overlay as a silver bullet for every accessibility problem on the planet, and unless you’ve been living under a rock or are an overlay vendor, you’re probably aware that overlays as a solution are at the absolute bottom of the totem pole. Any company which tasks a single individual with all of the responsibility for accessibility is guaranteed to fail at accessibility, and anyone who’s been in this field for any length of time knows this. To use someone who is guaranteed to constantly be fighting an uphill battle, only to not succede in the end, as a marketing prop for your own accessibility consulting, like you’re the white knight who will come in and save the day, is disgusting, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say you should stay as far away from accessibility consulting as possible. There’s not an accessibility firm worth its salt that would stoop to the level of using someone who is guaranteed to be unable to complete the task they have been given as a ploy to market their own services. Those accessibility teams of one are some of the hardest working, least appreciated people in this field, and when I’ve been in that situation, actual accessibility professionals have given me a hand up, not used me as a selling point in a marketing campaign. Using overworked accessibility teams of one as a sales pitch dehumanizes those accessibility teams and devalues all of their hard work, as well as the work of everyone else toiling in this field.
Blog
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OK, so the hot new Ambutech cane I recently purchased has cracked, so it’s time for another one, and so it’s also time for a rant about assistive technology and eCommerce. Specifically, why does every single assistive technology vendor’s eCommerce setup have to suck so badly? Most of these are running WooCommerce, and holy hell it’s painfully obvious that these installs aren’t up-to-date, that the themes being used do not have WooCommerce support, (let alone accessibility), and that whoever set these up knows pretty much nothing about eCommerce, marketing, or WooCommerce. This isn’t about one-man shops. This is about vendors who have staff, who have the income, and yet who are perfectly willing to provide their customers with a horrible user experience just to save some cash. Guys, eCommerce is hard. There’s a reason you’re not going to get a working eCommerce that does everything you need it to do for any less than $10,000. But trust me, it’s worth the investment. If your customers have an enjoyable experience shopping with you, (and this includes accessibility), they will be more than willing to recommend you to their friends and family and you will see more business for your efforts.
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Not that I’m going to go leave this comment on the Breitbart website or anything, but there’s one huge problem with the so-called “buttering-up” strategy which Joel Pollak attributes to the president, and as someone who has negotiated my fair share of contract terms, I think I can comment on this to some degree. That strategy can work, if a few things are in place: First, you have to already possess a reputation for having an amiable personality. If you don’t have that, and you then go to the negotiation table pouring the sugar on as thick as you can, whoever’s on the other side is going to see right through that, and proceed accordingly. Second, as with any negotiation, you don’t show your hand before talks begin, and you sure as hell don’t hand over all your cards, (as the president appears to have done), before you secure worthwhile concessions from the other side. To do otherwise isn’t negotiation, it’s desperation to save face, and it usually never turns out that way. So I think it’s safe to conclude that the president, (once again) got played like a baby grand.
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Aside
Hey #indieweb people there was…
Hey #indieweb people there was a really heartfelt post about saying to hell with the silos and give me the indieweb… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1100858269483044869
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Aside
I’m in the process of giving the Customer Servant Consultancy website a fresh coat of paint. I’m planning to replac… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1100842199170891777
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Status
Giving Customer Servant Consultancy a Fresh Coat Of Paint
I’m in the process of giving the Customer Servant Consultancy website a fresh coat of paint. I’m planning to replace the current front page with a static front page and then link to the various content kinds in the navigation menu. I’ll also be rebuilding and updating the portfolio and testimonials and contact pages. I’m choosing a theme that still supports all the indieweb goodness while looking pretty different from my personal site. I’ll need to spend some time in the customizer making sure the color scheme has good color contrast, just in case it doesn’t currently.
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Read: An Introduction to Block-Based Homepages with the Genesis Framework by @cdils with some brief thoughts of my own
Speaking from experience, I know exactly what Carrie is talking about when it comes to widgets being a poor choice, (although the only available one), for homepage layouts. I’ve done more than my fair share of theme customizations and often times those customizations meant hiring someone to redo the CSS. I, for one, will be over the moon when I can fully use Gutenberg and take advantage of block-based homepages.
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Current status: Dealing with DNS and MX entry ratfuckery. I will be glad when this shit is working properly and this day gets to the part where I am doing enjoyable things. I think if I could throw this server off a roof right now I would. It’s going to drive me to start drinking. Oh and of course there’s the obligatory browwser/screen reader hick-uping going on because we just have to have delays between key-presses. And no, this is not NVDA. It’s the world-class screen reader we all know and love because this web host’s control panel is improperly coded so I’m reliant on the huristics Jaws employs to get this working. Never mind that browser support for anything other than Internet Explorer is pure unadulterated bullshit. Jesus I can’t believe this screen reader costs money.
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All three of my Apple Watch’s rings are full, and I’ve completed most of the work I wanted to get done today. I have a few things I’m putting off until tomorrow because I need to spend some time fighting with screen readers plus web apps but I’m not broken up about it. I have a very enjoyable evening ahead of me and I plan to enjoy every minute of it to the fullest extent possible. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.
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I’ve spent the necessary time to troubleshoot where things went wrong on my site, and I’ve found the problem. My Hebrew Date plugin has had an incredible run, but it’s now finally time for me to rewrite the whole thing. This is something I’ve been planning to do for a long time, but the project has lived on the back burner ever since I adopted the plugin. It’s now to the point where, (if I want to use it), it’ll need to be fixed. There were already a few things I needed to fix, like the calendar drift, which is far too geeky of a subject to delve into in a short note like this, and there are some things I’d like to add to it in order to make it featureful enough for my needs. So it’s disabled for now and hopefully everything resumes working as it should.
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This morning turned into a very unexpected case of Plugin Whack-a-mole. I think I have everything sorted out but it’s been frustrating. Kind of reminds me of manually reassembling display chains for Jaws. I will research this more later so I can nail down exactly where the problem is but for now I have more important things to do.
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Installing some updates on a Friday morning, like you do. Trying to figure out why my feed went sideways. Looks like the Syndication Links plugin got some really cool updates, which will be fun to experiment with. I’m expecting today to be a light work day, which means I can concentrate on some of the backlog of tasks I’ve been putting off. I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend.
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Me: Goes to get some ice, which I rarely do. Icemaker: Not dispensing ice. Me: “Shit, icemaker’s clogged, time to take it out and clean it again.” /me begins cleaning icemaker. Roommate enters and says: “Didn’t you just do that a couple weeks ago?” Me: “Yes.” Her: “Wait, it clogs up if you don’t use it?” Me, biting my tongue because this is the most obvious thing in the entire fucking universe: “Yes.” Yep, this is me being all domestic and shit.