Mitch11's Celebration Blog

Today after breakfast I took a walk in my Berlin neighborhood. I saw many homes, some businesses, and some public gathering places. I saw two glass collection locations, and I wondered if they would appear on a map. My first search result was Glas entsorgen – Entsorgen.org . The first commenter was a person with a disability seeking a pickup service for his glass recycling. This story so far portrays the tangential tendencies of my ADHD brain. Others have told this story before! Here's a fun version: Hal replacing a lightbulb (YouTube autoplay, 42 seconds) . Fortunately, before I went to bed last night, I chose my goal for today: to categorize and prioritize the whole world of unsolved accessibility problems, with a focus on technology. Does that sound unrealistic? Well, I believe I can harness my creativity to tame this complexity. In fact, I can use this morning's tangential topic for my ambitious goal today. The commenter's need for a recycling pickup service is ...

We visited the Lutheran church on Müllerstraße today in Zehlendorf. Today is the Sunday commemorating baptism. We sat in singles in pairs with social distance. The congregation is older than we are and equally white. A few people had evident disabilities. The pastor is engaging. His speech and movement convey energy. The sermon started with the idea of Erwaehlung — I tried to look it up in Google Translate, then I got Silke's help. "Gott liebt mich grundlos." The pastor connects the traditional Lutheran message to our contemporary world. Examples: it's a mistake to play on a computer to avoid feeling pain. He said something about #BlackLivesMatter but as a language learner I didn't understand the context. I went in with low expectations of understanding everything, then the experience beat my expectations — I understood 75% of everything spoken. Du oder Sie? I know we say Du to God. Does God say Du to me? The organist today played the hymns clearly an...

Are companies using WCAG for non-web software? Short answer: Yes! This is important for standards education. The question came up because I recommended that the WCAG-EM Report Tool  not hard-code the words "websites" and "web pages" into its reports. I said the tool should also include suitable language for non-web software, such as mobile apps. Personally I've written a lot of WCAG reports in VPAT format for non-web software, but I wondered... Is this my weird specialty, or is it common? So I asked the Internet. I looked at the ten biggest digital companies because I had a hunch they might publish their VPAT reports online for all to see. I was right — after a few simple web searches, I found six out of ten of these large companies publishing their VPAT reports online. A few clicks later, I had the data I was looking for. Five out of six  large technology companies have published at least one VPAT report for non-web software. I was disappointe...