Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Meaning in our lives and work

I started blogging in 2006.

The thing I like best about those first posts were the quotes that related to the topic. Here's one from this early post.

Quotable

“The least of things with a meaning  is worth more in life  than the greatest of things without it.”  

—Carl Jung, “Modern Man in Search of a Soul”

It's true. The small meaningful gestures, words, and acts of kindness of those around me are worth a lot to me. Those connections make life meaningful.

They feed us better than the barrage of words and messages we receive every day through the media, our interaction with technology or the marketing messages vying for our attention.

I'm a designer in the worlds of finance, marketing and technology. It's my job to make your experience on our website a pleasant one, a trustworthy one, a (dare I say) delightful one. The challenge is to make the empathy I feel for you and your experience evident to you through the design and technology. Believe it or not there are many of us who care deeply about getting it right in all the big and small ways that are meaningful. So that we can connect with one another. So that our work and your experience are meaningful to both of us.

I ended that early blogpost with this.

The future of successful design is not in new technologies alone,
but in connecting with users to make meaning in their lives.

I still believe that.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

About web accessibility from the experts at WebAIM.org



I've been buried for the last 6 months in teaching myself all about web accessibility (A11y), what it is, how it benefits others and how to achieve it.

Recently I attended the WebAIM 2-day training on the Utah State University campus in the beautiful Logan, Utah, to finally check my knowledge and fill in any gaps.

I'm pleased to say I know a lot about accessibility already, had a few misconceptions cleared up and dove into ARIA tagging.

I tweeted all my notes to share in real-time with colleagues.

Here is the Storify version, as a recap. Enjoy!

Tidbits from A11y training at WebAIM - Day 1
Day 1 continued
Day 2