accessibility
Yes, Virginia. Unique link text really is important.
09 August 2017
One of my biggest pet peeves these days stems around blog or news sites. Your typical blog front page will include a bunch of articles. Each article has a title, a date, maybe an image, and a small bit of “teaser” text from the article itself. The goal is to get the reader to choose a specific article and click to read the entire article. To make that goal abundantly clear, each article on this front page includes a link or a button that usually says “Read More” (or something similar).
development
accessibility
Manual accessibility testing is your new BFF
08 August 2017
Testing your websites to ensure they are fully accessible is a lot of work. There are a bunch of tools out there to help you thoroughly test your sites - Siteimprove or Tenon, for example.
Gearing up for IUI #3
07 August 2017
Yes, I apparently skipped writing about IUI #2. Sorry, folks. I am an inconsistent blogger.
development
accessibility
I'm lost!: A brief introduction to web landmarks
20 July 2017
Let’s pretend for a minute that you are a new visitor to Washington DC. You look around and see a lot of streets, buildings, and other structures. You need to get from one point in the city to another. You ask me, a local, for directions. I could give you directions like this:
accessibility
Stop 👏 putting 👏 text 👏 in 👏 images
18 July 2017
I can’t believe it is 2017 and I have to say this, but stop putting text in your #$@&*% images!!!
development
accessibility
Bold and strong are not the same thing
10 July 2017
Believe it or not, the <b>, <i>, <strong>, and <em> tags have all been a part of the HTML spec since nearly the beginning. All four of these tags were introduced in HTML 2. However, for a very long time, the community was focused on the <b> and <i> tags only. It is only recently that the <strong> and <em> tags have become “popular”.
My first IUI rollercoaster
03 July 2017
For those of you who don’t know (and many people don’t), I made the choice to become a single mother after years of debating this. My first actual attempt happened on June 17.
development
accessibility
Keyboard navigation when carousels block your way
20 April 2017
Oh… carousels.
A time-out to think
15 March 2017
My doctor-imposed 2-month delay on starting my treatment (thank you chicken pox immunity woes) has given me a lot of time to think. Too much time, really.
Testing, the final tally
21 February 2017
I am finally (gloriously) done with the testing phase. I actually finished last week, but have been procrastinating writing about it.
HSG: The final (testing) frontier
14 February 2017
This is an intense week of testing due to scheduling and where I am in my cycle. I had my last test today, the HSG, or hysterosalpingogram. (Say that five times fast.)
Prep work update
01 February 2017
I took a couple baby steps in the last 24 hours to prepare my brain and body for the months ahead.
A new beginning
30 January 2017
I had my initial consultation with Clinic Beta today. I had some initial concern that my experience with this new clinic would mimic that of Clinic Alpha. I was pleasantly surprised.
life
Taking action when you have social anxiety
22 January 2017
I attended the Women’s March on January 21, 2017. This march that was the largest inaugural protest in US history, with over 500,000 people in DC alone.
A complicated tale of research
10 January 2017
This is a tale of two fertility clinics. I do not want to use names, so I’ll call them Clinic Alpha and Clinic Beta here.
The dilemma: A brief introduction
10 January 2017
I want a baby. I am also a single woman, a fact that does not seem to be changing anytime soon.
life
Not making new year resolutions
31 December 2016
It has been a year. Some of us have had a really rough year, while others had a pretty good year, but feel awkward admitting that 2016 wasn’t all that bad.
development
accessibility
Accessibility and phone number formatting
02 November 2016
Accessible phone numbers on the web is a more complicated topic than you would think. Screen readers are remarkably inconsistent in the way they handle phone numbers. This is a huge issue from an accessibility point of view.
development
accessibility
Accessibility testing: Screen reader edition
16 September 2016
Accessibility testing on our websites is a large, large topic. I am writing about testing with screen readers here, but please keep in mind that accessibility testing != screen reader testing alone. There is a already great article from Viget about web accessibility testing in general – “How to do Web Accessibility QA“. (Be sure to read both parts.)
development
When Git ignore doesn't
01 September 2016
Imagine this: You have a file in your Git repository that you need to modify. Perhaps it is a settings file for your CMS. The settings file works perfectly for your QA or production environment, but you need to modify it for your local environment to run off of a different port or to enable developer logging or to do whatever else. These local changes are critical to your local environment, but they will not work on production. No matter what, you must not commit these changes.