Category: Personal

Morality Plays in Accessibility

Besides being a great designer, Seth Nickel is a really good writer. Maybe that’s what it takes if you want to pass on your vision and ideas to stubborn developers. He wrote one paragraph yesterday that resonated with me:

…we’ve been framing the hacker<->designer conversation around low level usability. Maybe we could get more done if the default conversation was different? If it happened earlier? If it was about deep design rather than surface bodangles?

This is exactly how I feel about the designer<->accessibility-advocate conversation. Accessibility is too often an afterthought that is divorced from the design process.

In the past I did some contract work as an “accessibility engineer” on a certain project. It went something like this (at the risk of encouraging an annoying meme):

NO

projectmanager: It is soooo important for us that this application be really really accessible, and support ATK really really well. And that people with disabilities have really really good access to this. Also, if you could make sure your ATK support is good enough for automated testing, that would be greeaaaat.

accessibilityperson: I would love to help. I noticed that the color theme is hard-coded, this is problematic since users with visual impairments have different needs regarding color and contrast.

artsyfartspants: The color scheme is deliberate and has been very carefully thought out. And besides, it is white on black, which is technically high-contrast, so anybody could read it.

accessibilityperson: I also noticed that animations in this application are hard-coded and cannot be disabled. This is an issue since people may be very sensitive to animations and get motion sickness. The application should respect a system-wide animation-disable toggle.

artsyfartspants: Please see my answer above. The animation’s effect and timing have been very carefully thought out. This is old news, I wrote the design spec 6 months ago, you are wasting my time.

accessibilityperson: The user notification is transient, and disappears after a few, hard-coded, seconds. Users with cognitive disabilities, slow readers or users who are not native speakers of the interface’s language will have a hard time understanding the notification before it disappears.

artsyfartspants: By design, see above.

accessibilityperson: The user notification appears, hard-coded, in the upper right corner of the screen. Users with bad peripheral vision will miss these notification if their gaze is not set on the screen’s corner.

artsyfartspants: By design, go away.

accessibilityperson: But..

artsyfartspants: Bye!

A week later

accessibilityperson: I completed adding ATK support to the application, you could grab my branch and try it out. I have other concerns regarding accessibility issues in this application that need to be addressed.

projectmanager: Great! Could we now do automated testing on our POS and increase it’s quality a lot?

accessibilityperson: Sure. I also wrote an Orca script for the app so that screen reader users have a pleasant experience using it.

projectmanager: k. Write automated tests.

Do I have a good solution to all the accessibility issues I brought up? Not necessarily, that is why we have good designers.

YES

designguru: Here is a writeup and a few mockups for the app. I did my best at universal design and included a diverse array of users in the use cases I designed for.

hackmaster2000 : This looks good! I will implement this while making sure that mechanism and policy are separate so that edge-case users can be accommodated for without intrusive patches and hacks.

projectmanager: Great work guys! The universality of the design, and the modular implementation will allow us to make some extra cash as we deploy this app for mobile devices and e-readers with little modification.

accessibilityguy: Lookin’ good. I have a branch with ATK support, I am currently testing this app with different assistive technologies. Could I suggest just tweaking this and that?

projectmanager, hackmaster2000, designguru: Absolutely, making sure our software is accessible is very important for our project. We support all our users, not just the first 80%.

projectmanager: I can haz magic testing now plz?

Postscript

Máirín’s writeup about the accessibility discussions at the UX hackfest really made me happy. So glad Willie Walker made it there, I thought of going, but Willie really knows how to drive a point home.

My friend just came by and asked if I am blogging about Open Sores. I guess so!

On The Road

Sitting in JFK’s Jet Blue terminal, I could run out and catch a train to my grandparents, but it just seems so darn early, and I am not sure if I want to brave NYC just yet.

Here is a silly badge:
I'm going to FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting

If you asked me a month ago, I would have said that the next time I get to geek out with European GNOME folks would be in the summer. But it’s not, it’s next week! I only have a vague picture of who will be there outside of the Collabora scene, but I am looking forward to seeing folks. I also really wanted to go to the usability hackfest later in February, but there is just that many times you could cross the Atlantic in a month (once).

The accessibility hackfest is coming up! I’m excited. I hope to have a few moments of clarity when this event is over. It will be useful to have a list of tasks and dates if we want to pull this off again. A special thanks to Stormy, the GNOME board and travel committee for their help in putting this together. I usually spare my pretty little head from logistics and organizing, but it’s good to take on such a project once in a while.

New Job

Collabora Before this news gets old, I figured I should mention it in this here bloggy.

I started working for Collabora! I am really happy to be on board, it’s great to be in company with smart people. I’m already busy with Telepathy once again, after a few years break. I’ll be at the upcoming FOSDEM, and I am looking forward to catch up with my new colleagues.

Scanning Books: Yet Another Project Idea

While reading Boingboing today, I came across two consecutive posts that made me really itch to do something.

The first one was about a grad student who posted an instructable for building a $300 book scanner. The second is how the US Chamber of Commerce is trying to derail the rights of individuals to digitize their own copy of books, typically to an accessible format.

Does anyone in the Seattle area want to team up and build this? I think it would be a cool service to offer friends and family. Need a book in DAISY or e-book format for your Kindle? Just send it to us with return postage, and we will send it back together with a CD.

I don’t see this as strictly an accessibility issue. I am reading Another Country by James Baldwin now. I could not find a digital copy for it to read on my Kindle. Or more correctly, it exists, but I would need to live in Europe to purchase it. Isn’t that crazy?

So, who is up for this?

New Beginings

The month of November has been a month of news. That is new in plural, not information about recent and important events.

New Home and house mates

We all moved together into a new green house, with a new chore wheel and a new pergo floor. It’s quite fantastic, I just need to update my mailing address across the board for the third time in 6 months. My house mates are all sorts of fun, and cooler than peppermint patties.

New E-mail

After 15 years with the same e-mail address, I decided it is time to graduate from my dad’s domain name into my own. My new address is eitan at this-blogs-domain-name.

New Bank Account

I have been getting tired of Bank Of America’s mediocreness, especially when it comes to online services, so I started transfering to BECU, a local credit union.

New Bike

I have a new red bicycle. It’s a real head-turner, which makes me concerned about theft. But I am just going to enjoy it anyway. I have almost completely stopped walking to places since I got it. Capitol Hill is just an 8 minute ride away.

Mono And Virgins

I really can’t get myself worked up on anything RMS says anymore.

By reading the blogosphere in the week after GCDS, you would think that the only thing that went down there was RMS’s silly comments. While I am a long-time free software user and advocate, I have a hard time staying in tune with the FSF that spends most of it’s time telling us what not to do, what not to use, and generally informs us of the world’s evils. Sitting at the registration desk at GCDS we got a sticker dump from Stallman, besides a “Linux/GNU” sticker, all the stickers informed us about what is crap. This is not how you build a movement.

In the past decade I have seen some fantastic and creative FOSS. While RMS has played a historic role in this movement, it is time to thank him for the tool chain, invite him to keynote, if you must be polite, and move on. Write code, write documentation, compose music, in any platform you choose. But most important, don’t get caught up in this guy’s rhetoric, it’s just not worth it.

Sexism

While it would be convenient to self righteously point fingers at an infrequent keynoter’s sexist joke, the real work needs to be done in the IRC channels, the planets, and mailing lists. With ourselves. We have issues with sexism, big ones.

Tel-Aviv Barcelona Tel-Aviv Seattle San-Fran Seattle Gran-Canaria Seattle

I am up and traveling more than usual this summer. Which is great, although I really would like to spend as much time as possible up in the North West before it gets cold and dark again.

I am now at UDS Karmic (come say hello!), and it takes a while to explain to folks where I live, and what is up with me. I moved out of my Tel-Aviv apartment last week, and I am couch surfing (thanks Emily!) in Seattle next week, looking for a home. Oh, and once I land in Seattle, I will go right back to the airport and spend the weekend in the Bay Area for a JVP conference.

Thanks to the GUADEC travel committee, I will be attending Gran Canaria! I didn’t really plan to attend this year, but now that I am, I need to take advantage of the time there to the max. I’ll be cheering Ara when she presents the desktop testing project, and I will be unofficially unvieling LDTP2. I also want to catch up with folks on the a11y front, there has been some excellent work lateley: D-Bus AT-SPI is taking shape, UIA, Orca is becoming slick, and MouseTrap is neat. There is also plenty of chllanges ahead, namely WebKit and the audio/speech stack. I’ll also try to make myself as useful as possible to the event organizers.

Memery

I have been tagged with multiple memes lately, a I have rudely ignored all of them. No more! What better birthday gift to myself than a blog post. I will now answer these memes with my own. I was tagged by Marco and Steve with the “7 things” thing, and by a couple of Facebook buddies with the “25 things” one. So I decided to reply with a “16 things” post, which I believe is the average of 7 and 25. I liked Vince‘s idea of using the top tracks in itunes shuffle mode, so I will be doing that. I will also not tag anybody, since this terrible pyramid scheme needs to die.

Before I begin, if you want to read up on antisemitism on the left, this week The Guardian had some wonderful columns written by lefty U.K. Jews on that topic. One column was followed by a rebuttal, but in my opinion both columns complement each other beautifully.

  1. Miner’s Song – Woody Guthrie
  2. How’s Chances – Ella Fitzgerald
  3. Theme From Rawhide – The Blues Brothers
  4. Pannonica – Thelonious Monk
  5. Girl From The North Country – Bob Dylan And Johny Cash
  6. Hypnotize – The White Stripes
  7. People Ain’t No Good – Nick Cave
  8. Sao Paulo – Morcheeba
  9. Land of 1000 Dances – Wilson Pickett
  10. Pulled Up – Talking Heads
  11. Walk Like an Egyptian – Bangles
  12. עמיר לב – לפעמים אני מאושר
  13. For The Damaged – Blond Redhead
  14. In My Bed – Amy Winehouse
  15. History Of Lovers – Iron And Wine/Calexico
  16. Breathless – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Now What?

The killing, for the most part, has stopped. But the nightmare is not over. This catastrophe is about to be induced into Israel’s hall of fame, right next to other prides such as Operation Entebbe and Tal Brody. The collective Israeli memory is going to remember the bloodshed of the last few weeks as a happy period, when we “let the IDF win”. It does not matter how many rockets fall on Sderot from now on, operation “Cast Lead” will always be remembered as a success, a testimony to our elan. Or at least a step in the right direction. The only dispute now is whether we should have continued the killing.

This has been a bitter lesson for me. Since 2006, I have been in dispute with this country regarding the war in Lebanon. I was outraged when it started, both at the government and the gullible public. During those summer weeks there was nobody I knew in Israel who was thinking sensibly and not repeating the hasbara ex-general pundits were feeding everyone over the tube. The entire venture was a failure. A commission was formed, politicians were forced to quit public life, and the army practically purged it’s entire senior command.

I was not expecting Israel to apologize, to knock on my door and say “we were wrong, you were right”. I was pessimistic on one hand, Israel’s military was going to look for the first chance to redeem it’s lost esteem, but optimistic in on the other, the public will not eat this kind of bullshit again. I was hoping that the 2006 experience would cultivate some healthy scepticism that would not allow generals to get away with anything.

I was wrong. The war in 2006 was a failure, and everybody took it upon themselves to make it “work” this time, not just the army and government, but the public too. I naively believed that the disproportionate destruction and civilian death in Lebanon tickled the public, just a bit, but it didn’t. Lebanon turned into an unpopular war because of the shoddy intelligence, the rusting equipment and the hesitant commanders. The national disgrace was not the carnage, but the amateurish way in which it was carried out.

By those standards, this last episode was an outstanding success. The intelligence was good, the raids were potent and demoralized the enemy, the reservists recieved modern and lubricated equipment, and the expectations were low. The dying and suffering civilians in Gaza did not play a role in the metrics of this operation’s success. The disfigured children in overcrowded hospitals were a setback only in the sense that the world was watching, and it was getting awkward. The public here did not blink.

Do you want your children to learn that narritive in history class? It is a mark of Cain, not a victory. We can’t let it go down as one.

Shampoo Queen #2

I hope this does not turn in to a wartime tradition. After the last Lebanon war, I posted a rough translation from a song that was featured in Shampoo Queen (or Queen of The Bath), Hanoch Levin‘s provocative satire about the Israeli consensus surrounding militarism and national schovinism, specifically following the 1967 victory.

A lot of these themes remain relevant today. Because of the illegal nature of our actions in Gaza, I thought I would share the following song. Please excuse my rough translation:

The Ten Commandments

On a sunny and pleasant spring morning
We all rose as one man
Strong and invigorated people
Of good stature and brave
We rose and we climbed mount Sinai
Where we received the word of The Lord
We climbed proud with song and poem
The word of The Lord to return.

First conclusion, for security needs
We tossed to the sky the first commandment
After that we also tossed the second commandment
It too, because of the security situation
After the second, the third came next
An understood act of a state under siege,
And this naturally includes
In the same package the fourth commandment

The fourth commandment, and the fifth with it
Because ‘If he come to slay thee, forestall by slaying him’
And with a similar cause of the struggle for existence
Will throw the sixth away with urgency
It was necessary and so justified
That the seven commandment was tossed too.

After it the eighth and the ninth with it
Both for reason of battlefield morale
And to finish with an even number
The tenth commandment was sent with the others.

On a sunny and pleasant spring morning
We all returned as one man
Strong and invigorated people
Of good stature and brave
Our heads held high
Our shoulders light
Filling our lungs with air.

I found on the internets a video about the Shampoo Queen scandal. It features the song above. If I had all the time in the world, I would have translated it. My favorite quote there comes after a high-school student asks the IDF’s chief of staff, Bar-Lev, if “The Queen of The Bath” has hurt the army’s morale. Bar-Lev replies “A week ago I went to an IDF outpost in Sinai and asked the soldiers ‘what is your opinion regarding The Queen of The Bath?’ they answered ‘Bring the queen, we will give her a bath over here!’”. I love that quote because it plays so well into Levin’s critique of a militarized society.