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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).

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:

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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