Focus on What Matters2022 has been a time of major life change for me. In addition to working successfully for the second year as an independent, I got married…
Content-visibility and Accessible SemanticsUpdated April 1, 2021: The situation as I originally described is no longer an issue, it seems! Read on for more details. The lessons still…
Outsider Leverage and AccessibilityOne's level of impact on accessibility at an organization can depend on many factors: whether you're a full-time employee or contractor, the…
Remote Work and Van LifeThere are many benefits to working a remote job: you don't have to invest time or money in a commute. There's no requirement to work in a…
Salary and Career GrowthThis week I hosted a lunch meetup for NW Tech Women in downtown Bellingham, where we had a discussion about building a career in tech and…
On Great Leadership, Gatsby & Girl Develop ItOn January 28, 2019, I started a new role as the Head of Learning at the remote startup, Gatsby.js. So I’m a leader at my job now. I don’t…
The Deal with Developer AdvocacyAs a Developer Advocate, I often think about what impact I want to have and the best ways to accomplish that goal. My job is to meet…
Live Coding AccessibilityPhoto by Tiho Tadic This year, I accepted a challenge from Smashing Conference Toronto: present a talk on live accessibility debugging with…
Chapter Two at DequeAfter 2½ years at Deque Systems (pronounced D-Q, if you aren't already hip to it), I'm happy to say that they've approved a new role for me…
2017, in MusicIf there's one thing I partake in every day that brings me so much comfort and joy, it's music. That's probably why I've compiled a mixtape…
Writing winning abstractsDo you want to speak at conferences more? Do you submit to CFPs but struggle to have your proposals accepted? Perhaps writing an abstract…
Accessibility is a Civil RightOn Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this year, amidst a giant shift in U.S. politics and societal norms, I want to take a moment to discuss…
2016, a Year of MilestonesAs this year winds to a close, I'm thinking back on a few significant changes I made in life in the past 12 months. I've really come to see…
Best of 2016 MusicI've compiled my favorite music again all year (for the 8th time!), but it's been a while since I wrote about it on this website. In…
Links vs. Buttons in Modern Web ApplicationsGithub: Links or buttons? Something that comes up again and again in front-end accessibility is the issue of links versus buttons. You know…
Accessibility and PerformanceThis post represents a final distillation of my talks given on Accessibility and Performance at Fronteers, Seattle JS and Generate NYC in…
I won an O'Reilly Web Platform Award. OMG.This past week, I experienced something quite remarkable: O'Reilly, the organization known (to me) for web development textbooks with…
Web Accessibility ResourcesThese are my favorite web accessibility resources, books and tools as a web designer and developer. I hope you find them useful for yourself…
This is what a developer looks like.This post was originally published on The Pastry Box Project on December 26, 2015. Have you ever felt excluded at an event even though you…
What's Your Legacy?This post originally appeared on The Pastry Box Project on August 26, 2015. Rest-in-peace Wally, my beloved dog, seen here pulling me up a…
Wally's Last DayWhat do you say upon losing a close member of your family? You have to say something to address the loss, and in a way it's healing to talk…
On writing better captions for imagesA picture is worth a thousand words Originally published on The Pastry Box Project on June 23, 2015. Even with the best of intentions, when…
Speak at your local elementary school.Last summer, a 4th and 5th grade science teacher from rural Oregon emailed me to ask if I would speak to his class over a Google Hangout…
Button Focus HellNote: This post (in part) led to a web standards proposal by Brian Kardell and Alice Boxhall called CSS Input Modality and later, the…
Page Scrolling in Mobile Safari & VoiceOverWhen I redesigned this website in November 2014, I had a design aesthetic in mind for the main navigation: a "hamburger" menu icon in the…
Accessibility WinsIn 2015, I started writing for The Pastry Box Project, a platform for web creators that gives you a bunch of random publish dates and the…
Notes from CSUN 2015In the first week of March, I attended and spoke at the CSUN 30th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference…
Protractor Accessibility PluginAutomated testing is a valuable tool for identifying common accessibility issues with a minimum amount of effort. As part of my work on the…
2014: One to RememberOther than my yearly favorite music posts, I don't usually write anything to recap each year. But 2014 was HUGE. My career exploded in the…
AngularJS Material Design & ngAriaWhen Material Design was launched, many of us in the accessibility community noticed that both the Polymer and Angular.js Material Design…
Summing Up JSConf EU 2014This post was migrated from its original location on the Substantial blog. In 2014 I traveled to Berlin to speak at JSConf EU, a community…
How I Audit a Website for AccessibilityThis post was migrated from its original location on the Substantial blog and updated on March 17, 2020. Contents Headings and Semantic…
CSUN Conference RecapThis post was migrated from its original location on the Substantial blog. A few months ago I saw many of my accessibility heroes RSVPing…
Accessibility and the Shadow DOMA lesson on rendering trees, emerging technologies and tacos. This post was migrated from its original location on the Substantial blog. tl…
Favorite Music 2013Music continued to make my world go round in 2013. Here are my favorite tracks of the year, which my awesome employer, Substantial…
Girl Develop It Web AccessibilityIn 2013, I became a member of an amazing community: Girl Develop It Seattle (opens in a new window)! I first got involved with the group on…
Mobile Web Accessibility with VoiceOverShould mobile webpages be accessible? (That seems so obvious when I ask it out loud.) The answer is, YES! With smartphone and tablet usage…
Webstock & NZ 2013On a Saturday morning in December 2012, I was at home reading Twitter when I came across this tweet from @Kissane about how fondly she…
Favorite Music 2012I love music. I cherish finding new favorite artists & albums; the Internet is great for that. For each of the past five years I have…
Decibel Festival Recap 2012Decibel Festival was fantastic this year, as always. There were two nights where I picked less than stellar showcases but the other three I…
Favorite Music 2011Top 10 albums of 2011: Nu:Tone - Words and Pictures Little Dragon - Ritual Union SBTRKT - SBTRKT Holy Ghost! - Holy Ghost! Justice - Audio…
Spiceboard: Wordpress Recipes for iPadFor Christmas this past year I wanted to make gifts for my family using my web skills... what to do? I started thinking: my Mom, sister and…
POP ClockAfter seeing a few cool web clocks (Webkit Clock and the Hexadecimal Color Clock in particular), we at POP decided it would be fun to make…
Favorite Music 2010I recently put out my annual holiday mixtape, a compilation of my favorite tunes from the past year. 2010 was a great year for music, making…
CSS + JS + AccessibilityI have spent a lot of time retrofitting a certain website for screen readers recently. Before a month or two ago, I couldn't have told you…
Christmas JS1kGifted the benefit of R&D time at work, at the end of 2010 I submitted an entry to the Christmas JS1k contest along with my fellow POPsters…
Zend Framework....is awesome. I love that I've gotten to use Zend Framework on a few projects recently. While I do work with other platforms at POP, PHP…
NACCCIn October 2010, I traveled to Atlanta for the North American Cycle Courier Championships and raced with some peeps in Grant Park. No, I'm…
Urban TypeOriginally a photo essay for Typography class at the Art Institute of Seattle, my Urban Type project continues to influence my design style…
Sutton RVIn 2008 I redesigned and built my Dad's RV dealership website, SuttonRV.com. I inherited some cool branding but also some legacy code that…
Simplexml in php 5I found a new love in PHP — SimpleXML. I recently discovered I can traverse an XML tree just like I do in Actionscript, right in the middle…
AS3 Load WorkflowI recently finished my first big Actionscript 3 website and had to decide on the best loading sequence. I initially tried using the…
AS3 Mouse EventsI developed a website with nav items that covered the whole stage from top to bottom and I ran into a problem where it was pretty easy for…
Holiday 2009For the second year in a row, I have lovingly compiled a mix of my favorite tunes from the past twelve months. This time around, I…
Why Outlook SucksFix Outlook 2010! I work endlessly to make my web-pages and HTML emails work across platforms, browsers, and email clients. I have learned…
