Holiday Wishes

Continued Universal Design of Products

I love gadgets and technology that make life easier. Some of the items we’ve added to our house recently are the Amazon Echo and Smart Plugs. My husband has difficulty with fine motor control and balance. We tried other options like a touch lamp and motion detection. Coming into a dark room and finding even an adapted lamp switch or light was a hassle. The cat kept turning on and off our touch lamp and setting off the motion sensor. We connected lamps to smart switches so now he just asked Alexa to turn on the lights.  I am convinced this has prevented a few falls!

What is really wonderful about some of the AT options we’ve added recently is they are mainstream consumer items. My holiday wish is for this trend to continue. It is so much easier to build accessibility into the infrastructure than it is to retrofit or do remediation after the fact. Which leads well into wish number two!

More Accessible Web Resources

I attended the Accessible Learning Conference at Kellogg Center in East Lansing this month and was really pleased to see the strides made in making learning, including documents and web resources accessible. We’ve come a long way since I first designed a website using html code back in the mid 90’s!  There is so much growth in this area and it’s a challenge to keep up but so important to strive for equal access for everyone.  It’s just the right thing to do of course, and the recent court cases, like the win against Winn-Dixie and settlements as a result of advocacy by Marcie Lipsitt with the Michigan Department of Education continue the push for access!

Want to learn more about Web Access?

• The history of web accessibility.
• A recently released Video Introduction to Web Accessibility and W3C Standards.

Life is Good

A wonderful  person and friend who was active with the disability community in Lansing once said at a Michigan Disability Rights Coalition (MDRC) Board retreat that his wish for the future was for everyone to wake up in the morning with the thought “Life is Good”.  Thank you Al Swain, I miss you.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
May all your wishes come true!