David Gillon

The Map is not the Territory, Especially in Walkable Cities

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 18:12:21 GMT

Fascinating twitter thread from Katie Pennick, who is campaigns manager at UK accessibility charity Transport for All:

I’ve returned from my trip to Amsterdam! It was lovely.

As a wheelchair user, I found it much more challenging than I had anticipated.

My thoughts on transport and street accessibility…🧵 pic.twitter.com/aq6JZ0DrkP
— Katie Pennick (@KatiePennick) November 29, 2022

TLDR: Getting about in Amsterdam as a wheelchair user is significantly worse than in London. And despite all the claims of the cycling lobby that it's the model for the city of the future, it's actually made worse by the cyclists, not better.

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The Speed of Social Media

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 00:04:46 GMT

I just went from first hearing about a new Social Media platform to having its CTO tell me I was wrong in about two minutes ;)

Someone tweeted a link to a blogpost by Noam Bardin, founder of "Post News", in which he talked about all the things they aren't working on, one of which was "Accessibility".

So I checked his twitter, and about fourth down was where he'd posted about how "discrimination comes in many shapes and sizes". So being a rabble-rousing little shit I replied "Like not working on accessibility?"

Which got me an almost instant reply from their co-founder/CTO, quoting a reply he'd already written to someone else about how accessibility was core to the re-write they were doing and just "not something Noam actively tracks".

I pointed out if he's going around saying it's not being worked on he clearly considers it optional, and someone might want to have a word in his ear about what constitutes discrimination. And possible legal liability for that matter.

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Hugos

Sun, 18 Aug 2019 23:57:30 GMT

If the live feed from the Hugos is archived anywhere, it's definitely worth watching.

It starts with Jeanette Ng (who is Hong Kong Chinese) coming on stage as winner of the John F Campbell Award for Best New Writer and screaming "Campbell was a fucking fascist" and just gets more and more diverse from there.

Likhain accepting Best Fan Artist partially in (I presume) Tagalog.

A great speech (via acceptor) from Foz Meadows (Best Fan Writer) on accepting other bodies.

Elsa Sjunneson-Henry in tears as first Deaf-Blind woman to win a Hugo (Best Semi-Prozine) for Uncanny/Disabled People Destroy SF (and probably also first to have a guide dog on stage), and actually using "Nothing For Us, Without Us" in her acceptance speech.

AO3 taking best related work.

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse getting best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form,

Becky Chambers (Best Series for Wayfarers) noting she's missing her anniversary with her wife to be there. (I had my fingers crossed for Yoon's Machineries of Empire).

Zen Cho (who is Malayan) getting best Novelette for a Korean fantasy.

And Mary Robinette Kowal receiving best Novel from astronaut Dr Jeannette Epps for Lady Astronauts Book 1, the Calculating Stars, and promising to keep on writing for those pushed out to the margins. (I had my fingers crossed for Yoon's Revenant Gun, but you can't have everything).

Poor Michael Scott was almost overshadowed by his co-presenter Afua Richardson, who on top of being a featured artist fpr the con turned out to sing and play flute at professional levels, singing Stand By Me as a tribute to Nichelle Nichols and her work to get women into the space programme.(Which I also thought fitted well coming just after Elsa Sjunneson-Henry's invocation of "Nothing For Us, Without Us" and with MRK's win for the Calculating Stars and having Dr Jeanette Epps presenting.

The only fiasco during the ceremony was unfortunately an accessibility one, with the automated captioning being so bad it reduced the entire auditorium to helpless laughter at at least one point. Unfortunately the con's reaction was to pull it, which left those reliant on captioning with no support whatsoever, a mistake which has now been acknowledged (Though not actually apologised for). Apparently there will be an archived version with corrected captioning, but it really doesn't look good pulling the captioning while having a deaf-blind winner (and people won't be able to tell why the audience collapses into laughter).

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Gaming UX Accessibility Presentation

Sat, 29 Sep 2018 19:03:41 GMT

Came across this on twitter. It's a really well done* presentation on accessibility in gaming done in Social Model terms (though he doesn't actually use the term given a non-disabled audience). First 5 minutes are accessibility in general, the other 25 are gaming UX specific.

*Well bar the intro, which is a perfect example of why you want subtitles on presentations even for a theoretically non-disabled audience. She's rushing, she's heavily French(?) accented and she can't pronounce 'accessibility'. Took me multiple tries to catch what she was saying.

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