My last two tournaments have involved some terrible comments from other competitors. I won the last one anyways. 23 months ago, we had a group of teammates visiting from Austin and the Pacific Northwest. We wanted to do a group…
A tale of two retailers — a disability inclusion story
Lowes went all in to include deaf employees. Sprouts Market did the opposite. Here is how that has worked out for both companies. Sprouts Farmer’s Market Three d/Deaf applicants applied for jobs at Sprouts and were selected for interviews. The…
COVID-19 vaccine workplace accommodation requests
Requests for workplace vaccine exemptions due to medical conditions is a huge reasonable accommodations issue Disclaimer: This is not legal advice and is my own opinion. It in no way should be considered the opinion of my employer. What are…
Moving from accessibility testing into management
There are several questions you should be asking yourself before you make the leap My ex-boss (Jehad Affoneh, who recently moved from VMware Design to CDO of Splunk) did a very insightful series of tweets about things to ponder when contemplating moving from design…
Parenting a child with a disability
Some things that parents of disabled children know that might not be so obvious to others. I spend a lot of time at various disability/diversity/design/tech/HR inclusion events repeating my story about my career shift from tech law to digital accessibility…
Can I go to beta with an inaccessible product?
The more important question is, why would you want to do that? I get asked the question, “Can I go to beta without being accessible?” frequently. This question usually comes outside of my employment situation, most often from companies that…
Accessibility Micro-coaching
A technique for honing everyone’s accessibility skills Ever since the Internet was invented, training and communications trends have centered around getting those materials focused, more compact, shorter, and more effective. Why go to an all-day training when you can get…
Sanctions levied against plaintiffs for filing frivolous disability rights lawsuits
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Johnson, Dinn v. Caraf Oil upheld a district court ruling that fined both the attorney and the plaintiff in a disability lawsuit. Dinin is an attorney, Johnson is the d/Deaf plaintiff. Together, they…
How to avoid Twitter’s latest accessibility mistakes
Good accessibility programs include things that go above and beyond just compliance with the WCAG guidelines In June of 2020, I wrote about Twitter’s attempt to rely entirely on volunteers for accessibility testing, culmunating in a public outcry over the release of…
“Informal accommodations” are worth the paper they are printed on
Many American employees are discovering this as they attempt to continue working from home while their employers are trying to force them back into the office In an earlier article, I wrote about how mental health conditions have to be accommodated…