Notes

In reply to: Heather Burns’ response to the WordPress drama

I doubt Heather remembers the one-and-a-half conversations we had six or seven years ago, back when I was knee-deep in WordPress world. She’s a really impressive person, and people would benefit from paying attention to what she has to say.

The fact that Matt Mullenweg seems to view her as a key player in an imagined conspiracy to undermine his authority over the WordPress project, and has banned her from participating in a community she left years ago, speaks volumes about Matt, his character, and his fitness to lead an open source project.

Two articles published yesterday, from both sides of the US-Canadian border:

• Government Executive — “Agencies still struggle with online accessibility, GSA says”
• CBC — “Ontario was supposed to be accessible by 2025. Some advocates say it’s not even close”

Two ledes:

The federal government is often failing to meet its own requirements for digital accessibility, according to a new, congressionally-mandated report released late last month.

The report notes that in the “26 years since the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was amended to include Section 508, governmentwide Section 508 conformance remains low.”

… and…

When Ontario crossed into 2025, it was supposed to do so as an accessible province. Instead, advocates say it’s missed its own deadline.

In 2005, a unanimous vote carried in Queen’s Park to make the province accessible to people with disabilities within two decades. 

Two more excerpts:

Lawmakers should update the law itself to clearly define who needs to follow Section 508, bring it up to date with the current technological landscape and strengthen enforcement.

The report also calls for increased funding, as resourcing and staffing remain challenges. About half of the agencies surveyed don’t have the resources to even test their most viewed content. 

… and…

Implementation of the act has been reviewed four times over the years, most recently by Rich Donovan. His 2023 report found the legislation wasn’t being enforced and the state of accessibility in the province was in “crisis.” 

“The reality is you can create all the standards you want in the world. If companies don’t adopt them and use them, they’re totally ineffective,” he said in a recent interview with CBC Toronto.

Section 508 and the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) are not really directly comparable. But reading these side-by-side is, uh, interesting.

I know I’m late to the discourse but: Conclave is a flawed but ultimately beautiful film. I’m glad it exists, I’m glad it ends exactly the way it does, and I hope more people watch it.

In reply to: Mo Willems “Because” and Musette Strings at CPL Independence Branch

You know what’s always, consistently wonderful? Public libraries, and especially children’s programming at public libraries.

The kiddo has been becoming a lot more musically aware, and asks some really interesting questions about songs we listen to. He’s also becoming curious about what I do, and about disabilities more broadly. So last night we brought both of those together, talking about Beethoven, what it’s like to write music, and what it was like for him specifically to write his later works.

And with perfect timing, a branch of the Chicago Public Library had an event today where a string quartet accompanied a reading of the Mo Willems book Because. Beethoven kicks off that book, and Beethoven’s music was very much in the mix alongside some other pieces played by the quartet.

I am just so grateful to the Musette Strings musicians, the Independence Branch children’s librarian, and CPL in general for putting together programming like this.

Every time I try to type “serious eats” on my phone to find a recipe, I end up typing “serious rats.”

There’s gotta be some kind of usability lesson in that.

In reply to: The Advocate: History-making Sarah McBride sworn in as first out transgender member of Congress

I’ve been following the career of Congresswoman McBride for a number of years. She’s a remarkable person, and I think someone who will be a positive force in DC. I highly recommend her book, which is so much more than a conventional political memoir.

The coming months will show us all, once again, the extraordinary pressure put on trailblazers. McBride’s election is a huge milestone for trans rights in the middle of a vicious backlash against trans people. She’s a talented legislator with goals and ambitions to help her constituents, she’ll have good ideas and she’ll make mistakes, like anyone else. But everything she says and does will be viewed through the lens of “the first trans member of Congress.” It’s unfair.

But tomorrow will be different.

I’ve been thinking about what it would mean to design a user interface that prompts a user to mistrust it, and when it would be appropriate to create such an interface without undermining the utility of the interface.

I think I’ll have more on this. It’s a fun line of thought.

If I were more organized — and if everyone in my home wasn’t sick — I might write a “year in review” blog post. Instead, a half-hearted note will have to suffice.

When I did my annual performance self-evaluation at work, I found that I accomplished a ton of important things but made very little progress on some of the goals I had set in January. Many of those goals aren’t really relevant anymore, either, which maybe says more about the corporate culture of goal-setting than anything else. I’m incredibly proud of the things I did this year, they’re just mostly things I couldn’t have anticipated before they happened.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions so I don’t have any goal-setting document to compare against for my non-professional life. But I think it’s very much the same story. The things I am most proud of in 2024 are largely things I wouldn’t have been able to predict at the start of it.

I realize this isn’t an original observation, that life is unpredictable. That’s still where I’m at, cliche as it is.

This has been a difficult year for so many reasons. I expect 2025 to be even harder. But I’m so grateful to the kind and loving people in my life, and for the extraordinary place that is Chicago.

Nothing like ending 2024 with strep!

“Hard to Tell You” lyrics

Warpaint is a band that I find myself returning to all the time, and “Hard to Tell You” is one of my favorites — telling someone you love that the life you’ve built together, the life you’ve helped to define, just isn’t working for you anymore. (I’m fine! We’re fine! But, you know, relationships are complicated sometimes.)

This is a song that gets played on gray and gloomy days like today, melancholy music for melancholy days.