{"id":1838,"date":"2025-12-08T17:25:52","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T17:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/?p=1838"},"modified":"2025-12-08T17:57:57","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T17:57:57","slug":"cynthia-shelly-fireside-chat-29th-november-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/2025\/12\/08\/cynthia-shelly-fireside-chat-29th-november-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Cynthia Shelly &#8211; Fireside Chat 29th November 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1000\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1840\" src=\"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/il_fullxfull.3368931315_9tox.jpg\" alt=\"Black bloke wearing a black shirt. Printed message on shirt yellow text: MSAA IAccessible2 ATK\/AT-SPI UI-Automation AXAPI\" srcset=\"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/il_fullxfull.3368931315_9tox.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/il_fullxfull.3368931315_9tox-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/il_fullxfull.3368931315_9tox-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/il_fullxfull.3368931315_9tox-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I have known Cynthia Shelly since the early days of the <a href=\"https:\/\/w3c.github.io\/html-aam\/\">HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0<\/a> when we were co-editors.<\/p>\n<p>Cynthia has had a long career in accessibility, she worked at Microsoft on the initial Edge browser engine, overseeing the accessibility implementation of <a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows\/win32\/winauto\/entry-uiauto-win32\">Microsoft UI Automation (UIA)<\/a> Developed an Accessibility program while working at Starbucks. Worked at Google for 5 years on the accessibility implementations in the Chrome browser. She has recently relocated to the Netherlands and is in the process of opening her own Accessibility Consultancy.<\/p>\n<h2>Cynthia Shelly &#8211; Fireside Chat<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5QuU02egNzQ?si=IUMTuYqe1JQ5Hg6g\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<details>\n<summary>Transcript<\/summary>\n<pre>DEVO corporate Anthem plays for 1 minute\r\n\r\nSo there we go. So now we're we're\u00a0\r\nofficially and what I will do is I\r\n\r\nwant to share. Let me mute my notifications.\r\n\r\nOkay. So now we've got that sharing. Okay. Okay.\u00a0\r\nSo, now we've got us on the side and see I just\r\n\r\nwish it was they were larger. But anyway, um\u00a0\r\nOh, okay. You're going to get me in trouble.\r\n\r\nWhy uh why for for Yeah. Well, that's the thing.\u00a0\r\nIf there is anything that that you don't want\r\n\r\nto be associated with, you can say. I'll cut it\u00a0\r\nout. Anyway, this is this is just the the first\r\n\r\nscreen and what this is just fireside chat is\u00a0sponsored by HTML Z which and there's the\r\n\r\nURL for it and there's a code PIGGYTRUMP that you can get 20%\u00a0\r\noff. So, moving swiftly on. Okay. So here is the\r\n\r\nyeah the various people and good company.\u00a0\r\nThe first question I have actually which I forgot\r\n\r\nto ask Crystal Preston Watson is  which\u00a0\r\nseat would you like to sit in? The cardboard seat\r\n\r\nor the plushy seat? Oh, is there actually fire?\u00a0\r\nWell, yeah. Well, I mean, it doesn't really I\r\n\r\nmean, I'm not You're not going to get physically\u00a0\r\nburnt by sitting in the seat, put it up. Okay.\r\n\r\nI think I want the plushy seat then. Yeah, it's\u00a0\r\nit's the obvious choice, isn't it? So, it looks\r\n\r\nlike it should have unicorns. Yeah. Well, yeah, it\u00a0\r\nit could well do. I might add that it does have I\r\n\r\ndon't know if you noticed, but it's got the \u00a0 hands of power in their David's arms. Don't\r\n\r\ndon't ask me why. so first thing is\u00a0\r\nis that can you name these people on the screen?\r\n\r\nOh boy, I am bad at names. So, top left is I\u00a0\r\nI mean I could just say you don't it's not it's\r\n\r\nnot a competition really. You don't Okay. I mean I\u00a0\r\nknow Glenda. I know me. I know Matt. Yeah, I know\r\n\r\nthat. Is that David McDonald? Yes, that Karl. Yes,\u00a0\r\nGroves. I've met the person with the green shirt,\r\n\r\nbut I don't remember their name. her name's\u00a0\r\nSam Snedden. okay. She was the first\r\n\r\nthe first TPAC I went to in 2007, which is\u00a0\r\nMandelieu or 2008.  She was there. She was\r\n\r\nabout 12 or something. It was really odd. she'd\u00a0\r\nbeen involved Yeah, I do remember her from there.\r\n\r\nYeah, she looks really different. Been involved\u00a0\r\nin web standards and she's a luminary of the\r\n\r\nWHAT WG and she still works she works for Apple\u00a0\r\nnow as far as I know. Um and then Natalie Patrice\r\n\r\nTucker. Okay. bottom line.  is that Adrian?\u00a0\r\nIt is Adrian. It's And that's Charles next to him.\r\n\r\nYeah, Charles. I thought I' drop him in I just\u00a0\r\nwanted to mix it up. Uh, and next to him is a\r\n\r\nfellow called Dax Castro. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You\u00a0\r\nprobably PDF guy, right? Yeah. PDF guy. And next\r\n\r\nto him, is that Crystal? That's Crystal Preston\u00a0\r\nWatson. And lastly, but not leastly, James Nurthen.\r\n\r\nJames Nurthen. Yes. And so up the top we've got the\u00a0\r\nswallow. He's very proud because he's got some\r\n\r\nsort of medal he runs. Okay. So, well, he tries\u00a0to run, but anyway, he got a participation medal.\r\n\r\nNext to that is it's the same picture as the other\u00a0day that um I didn't change it. That is Haydon\r\n\r\nPickering. but it's a drawing and I don't know\u00a0\r\nwhere it came from. And it reminds me of Frank\r\n\r\nZappa. And I love Frank Zappa.  next to\u00a0that is Patrick. Patrick. Okay. And that's on\r\n\r\nhis wedding day. Wow. Yeah. It's a bit squashed\u00a0\r\nup because squash. Yeah. But he's actually\r\n\r\nYeah. Oh. Ah. He's Oh god. It just why? Yeah. See,\u00a0\r\nthis is what happens. I just keep doing this this\r\n\r\nthing whereby it just keeps disappearing.\u00a0\r\nUm, okay. So, I'm going to try again.\r\n\r\nAll right. So, we've got all these people.\r\n\r\nchoose any one of them that\u00a0\r\nyou want and it will reveal a\r\n\r\na topic. Let's go with my old friend Charles.\u00a0\r\nCan't hear you now. What's up? You sound gone. Oh,\r\n\r\nI'll turn up volume. Maybe it's me. Oh, there\u00a0\r\nwe go. Is it you? Okay. Yeah. I don't know what\r\n\r\nhappened. See, that's what I mean. It's just that\u00a0\r\nthey Yeah. Should we try that again? It's going to\r\n\r\nbe hard to edit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the Who which\u00a0\r\nperson would you like to choose? Let's go with my\r\n\r\nold friend Charles. Charles. Okay. Hobbies. What\u00a0\r\nhobbies do you have? Do you have any hobbies? Oh,\r\n\r\nwow. Um I have been trying to uh get back to doing\u00a0\r\nart. Um been sketching, doing a bit of watercolor.\r\n\r\nI used to do a lot of art when I was young and\u00a0\r\nthen you know jobs and kids and mortgages drawing\r\n\r\nand stuff. Drawing and stuff. Yeah. Do you \u00a0\r\nhang pictures of the drawings in your\r\n\r\nabode or do you have do you know make them\u00a0\r\npublic in any way? I don't make them public in any\r\n\r\nway. I might at some point. Um I just moved so\u00a0\r\nbefore I moved I was hanging them in my abode\r\n\r\nand I haven't gotten anything put up yet but\u00a0\r\nthat is the intention. Uh, cool. To yeah,\r\n\r\nhave more things on the wall that I actually\u00a0\r\nmade instead of bought. I have some uh Yeah,\r\n\r\nI mean, I take lots of photographs and\u00a0\r\nespecially when I'm in Spain. I go to Spain\r\n\r\nfairly regularly because my wife is Spanish and\u00a0\r\nI don't speak the the language that well,\r\n\r\nbut I do really enjoy this just walking around\u00a0\r\nand taking pictures of mainly architecture, but\r\n\r\nuh I've turned some of those into  sort of uh\u00a0\r\ncanvas frames and I've got them up on the\r\n\r\nwall. So yeah, I mean it's nice to have things\u00a0\r\nthat you have a personal association with. For\r\n\r\nsure. Exactly. Yeah. I'm thinking about signing up\u00a0\r\nfor there's a sketching an urban sketching class\r\n\r\nin January that I'm thinking about signing up for.\u00a0\r\nSo doing uh rough sketches and and watercolors of\r\n\r\nbuildings in Amsterdam, which sounds really\u00a0\r\nfun. Yeah. Well, there's lots of interesting\r\n\r\nI like Amsterdam. Yeah. I like Holland or the\u00a0\r\nNetherlands I should say now in general. I went\r\n\r\nto the Hague recently as for a WCAG-EM meeting\r\nwith um hidde which I think that you talked\r\n\r\nto. Yeah. And yeah it's it was an interesting\u00a0\r\nplace and I just like the vibe. Yeah. So that's\r\n\r\nwhere you're live. Well, you're not living in\u00a0\r\nthe hague, but you are living in Amsterdam. In\r\n\r\nAmsterdam. Yeah. Just moved a little over a month\u00a0\r\nago. And how's that working out so far? So far,\r\n\r\nit's working really well. You know, I'm I'm\u00a0\r\nmostly moved in. Don't have any art on the walls,\r\n\r\nbut I am mostly moved in. You know, I I found\u00a0\r\nmy spatulas and all of that sort of thing.\r\n\r\nmy stuff that was shipped by sea from the US\u00a0\r\narrived last week. So I'm still kind of surrounded\r\n\r\nby boxes, but it's nice to have like more than\u00a0\r\na suitcase worth of stuff. yeah, and yeah,\r\n\r\nit's working great. You know,  I'm I've I\r\ngotten to the point where moving is mostly done\r\n\r\nand I'm now focusing on getting getting my\u00a0\r\nbusiness up and going and finding clients and\r\n\r\ngrant funding for standards work and all of that\u00a0\r\nkind of thing. Wow. yeah, it's a big task.\r\n\r\nso have you have you moved on your own or with\u00a0\r\nfamily? Uh my 21-year-old is with me and we're\r\n\r\nwe're starting this business together. 21year-old.\u00a0\r\nIs that Yes. That is that baby you met? Wow. Yeah.\r\n\r\nI mean, I was just thinking back as, you know,\u00a0\r\nhow long I've known you. And did you were you\r\n\r\nat the Birmingham ARIA work meetup? I think\u00a0\r\nhe might I'm I'm pretty like I'm talking 2009,\r\n\r\nsometime like that. I know Rich was there, but\u00a0\r\nwe were doing a lot of the ARIA the Yeah. Yeah,\r\n\r\nat the time um the area specification of \r\nof how ARIA can be used or what what implicit\r\n\r\nsemantics were within HTML elements were was in\u00a0\r\nthe HTML spec itself. I don't think I was at that\r\n\r\none. I think that was one of the years where my\u00a0\r\ncorporate role was internally facing. but you\r\n\r\nmiss a lot. Well, I mean, I could hardly remember.\u00a0\r\nI know that Charles, I know that Rich Schwertfeger,\r\n\r\nI always have problems saying his name. Um, was\u00a0\r\nthere uh all I remember cuz at the time I was\r\n\r\nsmoking and I went outside with Charles went\u00a0\r\noutside the venue for a cigarette and then\r\n\r\nthere was like these people like street urchins\u00a0\r\nsort of homeless people that just descended upon\u00a0\u00a0us\r\n\r\nas soon as we appeared. like literally ran over to\u00a0\r\nus to to beg. It was interesting. So, I don't think\r\n\r\nI was there on that. Um, so you've moved to uh\u00a0\r\nAmsterdam. You're setting up a business with your\r\n\r\ndaughter. That's that's an interesting point. What\u00a0\r\nis the business? So, uh we're doing accessibility\r\n\r\nconsulting obviously because that's you know what\u00a0\r\nI do and there's kind of two areas that I\r\n\r\nthink we have sort of stand out. One is that\u00a0\r\nI have all this experience with big companies\r\n\r\nand with setting up sustainable programs and you\u00a0\r\nknow shifting left and making it so that not\r\n\r\nonly are we going to find your bugs and help you\u00a0\r\nfix them but we're going to help you set up the\r\n\r\nsystems and do all the training and integrate\u00a0\r\nit into your processes and so that you don't\r\n\r\nget those bugs so you don't keep getting them\u00a0\r\nand and so that when you do you find them early.\r\n\r\nSo when you say you you've got the experience,\u00a0\r\ngive us a bit of a potted history of your\r\n\r\nuh work in accessibility and standards etc. Show\u00a0\r\nmy age here. Um so uh you're not as old as me,\r\n\r\nso you're doing okay. Um, I was a uh dev lead\u00a0\r\non the MSN homepage uh right at the turn of\r\n\r\nthe century and someone from Microsoft's internal\u00a0\r\naccessibility group showed up in my office office\r\n\r\nwith a door um with WUKG one on paper and asked me\u00a0\r\nto implement it and um MSN even then was like we\r\n\r\nhad done all these things. It wasn't called Ajax\u00a0\r\nthen, but we were doing server round trips and,\r\n\r\nyou know, using using the DOM to pull things out\u00a0\r\nof iframes and update and cookies and stylesheets\r\n\r\nand all sorts of good fun, right? And and WG one,\u00a0\r\nif you remember, said don't use JavaScript. Yeah.\r\n\r\nAnd was that one of those until until uh\u00a0\r\nassisted catch up or not? I can't remember.\r\n\r\nNo, it it wasn't even an Intel user agents.\u00a0\r\nI think the CSS one was because it also said,\r\n\r\nyou know, everything has to work without CSS. Um,\u00a0\r\nbut uh it it was basically that you have to have a\r\n\r\nno script and your no script has to have the same\u00a0\r\nfunctionality as your script because there were\r\n\r\npeople using links and stuff still then. Um, as in\u00a0\r\nLYNX links, lynx, which was a textbased. Yeah,\r\n\r\nI think Pat still Patrick L, he still uses fires\u00a0\r\nup links. Well, he always mentions it when Yeah.\r\n\r\narguing about things, ironically, I must admit,\u00a0\r\nbut he still mentioned it. And, you know, for\r\n\r\na static textbased, maybe an image tag here and\u00a0\r\nthere kind of a web, it's a perfectly fine tool.\r\n\r\nI mean, I also remember using Gopher in the\u00a0\r\nlibrary in college and you know, wasn't that\r\n\r\nyour age? Yeah. Yeah. So, so you sort of like\u00a0\r\nI associate you with Matt May and Wendy Chisolm,\r\n\r\nyou were all friends together and we're all\u00a0\r\nfriends together. Yeah. So, time. So, they they\r\n\r\nperson from Microsoft's accessibility group handed\u00a0\r\nme WCAG 1.0 on paper and asked me to implement it.\r\n\r\nAnd I looked at it and said, \"This says don't use\u00a0\r\nJavaScript. don't use CSS.  I can't do that.\r\n\r\nUm can I fix it? And uh I didn't expect that to\u00a0\r\ntake eight years, but it did. And suddenly by the\r\n\r\nend of that eight years, people had decided I was\u00a0\r\nan expert. Um during that eight years like I left\r\n\r\nthat job at MSN, I went to a startup for a while.\u00a0\r\nI came back as a a program manager in on Visio.\r\n\r\ndid a lot of thinking about graphics accessibility\u00a0\r\nand sort of what it means to separate content from\r\n\r\npresentation in diagrams and drawings. I\u00a0\r\nhave patents about that. it's very fancy.\r\n\r\nGenerating money for you though, that's the\u00a0\r\nquestion. Uh, Microsoft gives patent bonuses.\r\n\r\nNot huge amount, but you get you get a nice\u00a0little bonus when you get a patent and a\r\n\r\nlittle statue. Um, yeah. Okay. um which you know\u00a0\r\nI cared a lot about at the time to uh Europe. Did\r\n\r\nyou did you carry the statues with you? I actually\u00a0\r\ndid ship a box of old office stuff because I just\r\n\r\ncouldn't get rid of it. You'll have to you'll have\u00a0\r\nto put them on public display at some point\r\n\r\nso we can see. They're in they're in a closet\u00a0\r\nright now. but yeah, um I also have a shrink\r\n\r\nwrapped IE2 or is it IE3? I think wrapped IE3 box\u00a0\r\nsoftware. Um yeah, I got the MVP  thing and I\r\n\r\nfor a couple of years the you know what is it the\u00a0\r\nmost valued right? Most valuable partner I think.\r\n\r\nYeah. Something or most valuable person. Yeah.\u00a0\r\nSomething. It's just a load of rubbish really.\r\n\r\nI mean I but here still got it here but I haven't\u00a0\r\ngot See you see yeah I recognize that font yeah\r\n\r\nbut it hasn't like you have these sort of little\u00a0\r\nlittle like um glass like uh coins or something\r\n\r\nyou put on it for each year. I've lost like I\u00a0\r\nhad it for two years. I lost one. But not Yeah,\r\n\r\nI think it's like most things it's uh it's worth\u00a0\r\nless than the trouble it is to maintain\r\n\r\nit. Yeah. So, like I said, my things are all in\u00a0\r\na box. but and so yeah, sorry. Go on. so\r\n\r\nlike after that  you know I left MSN I went\u00a0\r\nto a startup for a while. I came back as a program\r\n\r\nmanager working on graphics. I worked on Smart\u00a0\r\nArt which is part of it's in all the office\r\n\r\napps now but it started out in PowerPoint which\u00a0\r\ndoes automatic diagramming. It's not AI. It's\r\n\r\nit's extensible with an XML based\u00a0\r\nformat. Not that anybody does that anymore\r\n\r\nbut you know that was the new hotness at the\u00a0time. and then I worked on a bunch of\r\n\r\nother Microsoft products, but I always kind of had\u00a0\r\naccessibility as a side job. And then sometime I'm\r\n\r\ntrying to remember exactly when, like 2008 or so.\u00a0\r\nI went full-time to run accessibility for Windows\r\n\r\nLive and then I went to the central accessibility\u00a0\r\nteam um, that was at the time called Trustworthy\r\n\r\nComputing uh, under Robinclair who you probably\u00a0\r\nknow. yeah. Yeah, I mean I think I've met him\r\n\r\nand know where is Rob Sinclair? Is he he's somewhere\u00a0\r\nelse like he was at Atlassian. I haven't checked\r\n\r\nin a while. Yeah. Yeah. I mean cuz I knew\u00a0\r\nsomebody from TPG that that or a number of people.\r\n\r\nI mean uh what's his name? Uh Gerard Cohen. I\u00a0\r\ndon't know if you know him but he was he was at\r\n\r\nWells Fargo for many a year. I was front\u00a0end developer accessibly relate but he\r\n\r\nmoved to Atlas Atlassian I say Atlasian but yeah\u00a0\r\nbut but that doesn't really matter but yeah I\r\n\r\nmean people tend to move around don't they really\u00a0\r\ndo yeah mostly I was at Microsoft for a very long\r\n\r\ntime but and then I left in 2016 and I went\u00a0was your your departure from Microsoft. Was that a\r\n\r\n was it acrimonious or was it fine? It was\u00a0fine. It was fine. It was it was time. Yeah.\r\n\r\nand I went to Starbucks for a while where I set\u00a0\r\nup a whole, I remember you being at Starbucks.\r\n\r\nYeah. I set up a whole accessibility program\u00a0for their technology department. So\r\n\r\nStarbucks is a huge company but they're\u00a0the team that builds their website and their apps\r\n\r\nsits in an IT organization and you know which a\u00a0\r\ncouple hundred people but their apps have such\r\n\r\nbroad reach that we were working on the mobile\u00a0\r\norder and pay app so it had you know not only\r\n\r\ndid it have I don't remember the numbers but you\u00a0\r\nknow bazillions of users it also had bazillions\r\n\r\nof dollars flowing through it right and you\u00a0\r\nknow we were working really hard to make that\r\n\r\napp as accessible as it could be so that we, you\u00a0\r\nknow, so it would work for everybody. Starbucks\r\n\r\nclient base is everybody, right? Like they try to\u00a0\r\nbe super broad-based and appeal to everybody. Um,\r\n\r\nand you know, I think we did a pretty good job.\u00a0\r\nLike it it I'm sure you did. Yeah. It's never one\r\n\r\nof the things I was talked to uh Crystal Preston\u00a0\r\nWatson about about was um burnout and uh and how\r\n\r\nyou know especially when you're in organizations\u00a0\r\nin a smallish team or you're the only person in\r\n\r\nin the accessibly person in the room um that you\u00a0\r\nexpect to know everything. And I've been lucky\r\n\r\nenough never to be in a situation where I'm expect\u00a0\r\nto know everything because I I obviously don't.\r\n\r\nAnd I like to stay in my lane, you know, as far as\u00a0\r\nthe when people say a subject matter expert as as\r\n\r\nin relation to accessibility. There's just so such\u00a0\r\na broad technical subject you can't you know I I\r\n\r\nnever claimed to be. Luckily enough as I I said\u00a0\r\nI when people say are you an expert I say no I'm\r\n\r\nnot an expert but I know somebody who is I know\u00a0\r\nquite a few people you know I mean there's people\r\n\r\nso I always ask you know the person or the people\u00a0\r\nthat I know well I think have some understanding\r\n\r\nof of that particular area to you know provide\u00a0\r\nthe information because the last thing you want\r\n\r\nto like well the last thing I would want to do is\u00a0\r\nto provide advice that's incorrect or you know\r\n\r\nso yeah and a lot of what I've tried to do at all\u00a0\r\nthe places I've worked is to like train everybody\r\n\r\non the team right like you know before I got\u00a0\r\nso deeply into accessibility I have a lot of\r\n\r\nexperience just shipping software right and and\u00a0\r\nbuilding websites and high volume websites and\r\n\r\nkeeping them alive and keeping them updated and\u00a0\r\nyou know not getting server 500 errors that show\r\n\r\nup on in newspapers and all sorts of fun things\u00a0\r\nlike that, right? The '90s were awesome. but\r\n\r\nbut being able to like understand that building\u00a0\r\nanything is a team is a team thing. And you've got\r\n\r\nyou've got developers, but you've also got\u00a0\r\ndesigners and product managers and you know,\r\n\r\nsometimes you have business analysts and you\u00a0\r\nhave all these different roles that all have a\r\n\r\nand content authors and you have they all have a a\u00a0\r\nrole to play and just doing some very broad-based\r\n\r\ntraining. So that what I really hate about being\u00a0\r\nthe one accessibility person is that you spend 80%\r\n\r\nof your day answering the same 10 questions\u00a0\r\nover and over again. And I that is not fun.\r\n\r\nAnd so getting it so that people can generally\u00a0\r\nanswer those 10 questions themselves whether\r\n\r\nthat's by looking something up or by going through\u00a0\r\ntraining so they know the answers and also so they\r\n\r\ncan integrate it into their work. Right. Because\u00a0\r\nlike I'm never going to know all the nuances of\r\n\r\nUI design. Right. Exactly. Yeah. not my thing. And\u00a0\r\nI, you know, I can kind of sort of use Photoshop,\r\n\r\nbut I can't like do anything good with it, and I can kind of sort of use Figma,\r\n\r\ntoo. Like, it's just What do you mean by good?\u00a0\r\nI quite like what I do with Well, I had\r\n\r\na version of Photoshop that I had when I first\u00a0\r\nstarted at Vision Australia and I kept it. It\r\n\r\nwas like version six. you know, I could just take\u00a0\r\nthe whole Exie and then put it onto a new machine.\r\n\r\nThat finally stopped working when Windows\u00a0\r\n10 came out, I think. Yeah. but I, you know,\r\n\r\nit it was just as useful you know, 15 years\u00a0\r\nlater than than it was when I first cuz my skills\r\n\r\nnever really increased. But, you know, just being\u00a0\r\nable to do basic manipulation. I really dislike\r\n\r\na lot of the AI integrations into uh into like\u00a0\r\ngraphics products. I've gone back to using\r\n\r\npaint. So, which is which has evolved somewhat,\u00a0\r\nbut still, you know, I just want to do basic\r\n\r\nthings like turn images around or just remove\u00a0\r\nbackgrounds and things like that. anyone my\r\n\r\ndeeply ingrained set of keyboard shortcuts for\u00a0\r\nlike taking screenshots and things with paint\r\n\r\nmost of them don't work anymore and you know\u00a0\r\nand you know backward compatibility is a good\r\n\r\nthing but some of these things that were you know\u00a0\r\nit was still considered backward compatibility\r\n\r\nin 2002 right like it you know it um like until\u00a0\r\npretty recently all the word perfect key keyboard\r\n\r\nshortcuts worked in Word I don't think they do\u00a0\r\nanymore but They worked forever. Wow. Well,\r\n\r\nI mean, it's it's good that they keep, you know.\u00a0\r\nYeah. Yeah. So, the muscle memory still work, but\r\n\r\nthere's some point, I suppose, where you've got to\u00a0\r\nYeah. Change it up a little bit. I think Microsoft\r\n\r\nis less dedicated to backward compatibility than\u00a0\r\nthey once were. But, you know, I don't work there\r\n\r\nanymore, so I don't have any inside info. Well, yeah,\u00a0\r\nthat's you know, Internet Explorer. I mean,\r\n\r\nwell, that was an unfortunate demise. Yeah. Did\u00a0\r\nyou work on the on the edge? I did work on edge.\r\n\r\nThat was the last role I had at Microsoft was on\u00a0\r\nthe edge. What were you doing then? I was doing\r\n\r\num accessibility PM for Edge web platform.\u00a0\r\nThat was the pre-chromium edge web platform. Oh,\r\n\r\nokay. So, so that that time when we got 100% on\u00a0\r\nyour test, that was that was that was me and my\r\n\r\nteam. Well, I knew that. Yeah, I could remember\u00a0\r\nthat you were involved with that somehow and but\r\n\r\nthen I was I was dealing with Melanie somner No, not\u00a0\r\nMelanie some Melanie something. Yeah, Melanie took\r\n\r\nover when I left. Yeah. And Dave storey. Do you\u00a0\r\nYeah. Yeah. I haven't talked to him in a long I\r\n\r\nhaven't He's disappeared off the face of the\u00a0\r\nof the universe. I haven't seen anything from\r\n\r\nhim for ages. Yeah. I don't know. I think he's\u00a0\r\nstill in Seattle, but I'm not sure. Yeah. I mean,\r\n\r\nI was thinking back that we first started to\u00a0\r\ncollaborate on the what became the HTML accessibility\r\n\r\nAPI specification. That was like 2010 2011 some\u00a0\r\nover there. Yeah. And yeah, I can't remember why\r\n\r\nyou stopped being involved. I think that you got\u00a0\r\ntaken out of you know your focus was changed at\r\n\r\nMicrosoft. But what I was thinking about that \u00a0\r\ndocument that specification was that that predated\r\n\r\nuh any of the other a you know the model and\u00a0\r\nnow you know I've just seen well you're soon to\r\n\r\nbe working on the SVG which is has been moved\u00a0\r\nfor ages but yeah there's a whole thing I remember\r\n\r\num at CSUN and which about 2010 and I was\u00a0\r\ntouting this the idea of of having this because\r\n\r\nhaving the HTMLAAM and purely because that there was\u00a0\r\nno central like there was no documentation around\r\n\r\nhow it worked you know how the accessibility\u00a0\r\nAPIs worked and and how they\r\n\r\nrepresented things whether there was any\r\ninteroperability and I remember I was talking to\r\n\r\num you what was his name Aaron Leventhal at\u00a0\r\nthe time and he was yeah he told him to [\u00a0__\u00a0] off\r\n\r\nbasically well didn't he didn't say that but you\u00a0\r\nknow it was there wasn't a huge amount of interest\r\n\r\ncoming from yeah because he'd been doing the ARIA\u00a0\r\none HTML was the HTML group was pretty hard to\r\n\r\nwork with in that era and I think that may have\u00a0\r\nbeen some of Yeah, I feel a lovely bunch. It's\r\n\r\nfunny you should say that because now I'm on the\u00a0\r\nuh I get pinged when there's WHAT WG you know\r\n\r\nHTML related issues. Yeah, accessory related\u00a0\r\nissues. And I'm one of the people that gets\r\n\r\npinged. There's quite a few. But now I I sound\u00a0\r\nlike the voice of reason, you know, sort of like\r\n\r\nthere's these things that come up and then myself\u00a0\r\nand others such as Leone and Pat, we sort of,\r\n\r\nyou know, sort of say, well, yeah, you've got\u00a0\r\nto think about it differently or whatever. And\r\n\r\nand we end up usually making the point\u00a0\r\nthat no change needs to be made or or people just\r\n\r\ndon't understand. I think there's still a lot of\u00a0\r\nmisunderstanding about how accessibility APIs\r\n\r\nwork, how browsers, you know, produce them, how\u00a0assistive technology, mainly screen readers\r\n\r\nconsume that information. So, it's but\u00a0\r\nthere it's a lot. I mean, thinking back to,\r\n\r\nyou know, 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, even\u00a0\r\nthe amount of people involved in the accessibility\r\n\r\ncommunity and the web standards community that\u00a0\r\nthat have an interest or that have expertise\r\n\r\nin in accessibility related stuff was minuscule\u00a0\r\ncompared to today, which is pretty good. I mean,\r\n\r\nI'm glad there's lots of people, but there's\u00a0\r\nalso lots of, you know, people that that want to\r\n\r\nbe involved that that have eagerness,\u00a0\r\nbut don't have the full perspective. So,\r\n\r\nit, you know, it can it can involve um education.\u00a0\r\nThere's it's a still there's a lot more resources\r\n\r\nand infrastructure for beginners than there used\u00a0\r\nto be. Yeah, there is. But I think it's it's a lot\r\n\r\nmore complicated. Well, the whole web is more\u00a0\r\ncomplicated than it used to be, right? It's not\r\n\r\nlike you're going to build a website in Notepad\u00a0\r\nanymore. Which I did for money at Microsoft,\r\n\r\nyou know, at one time, right? so yeah so the\u00a0\r\nthat well and the thing with the aam is that there's this big disconnect because\u00a0\r\nweb people don't understand operating systems\r\n\r\nand operating system people don't understand the\u00a0\r\nweb right and for accessibility to work it's going\r\n\r\nthrough it's it's the web getting translated\u00a0\r\ninto an operating system API and then operating\r\n\r\nsystem rules taking over and they it's just really\u00a0\r\ndifferent and it's different on every platform and\r\n\r\nAnd it's super complicated and it's hard. I\u00a0\r\nthink it's just hard for a lot of people, people\r\n\r\nwho love the web and have, you know, think in web\u00a0\r\nways. Operating systems are really alien. And the\r\n\r\nsame was true. I think Microsoft is better about\u00a0\r\nthis than they used to be. I don't know. Google's\r\n\r\ncertainly better about this than they used to be.\u00a0\r\nBut, um, that, you know, people who spent 20 or 30\r\n\r\nyears building Windows Yeah. The browser is just\u00a0\r\nan app, right? And it should work the same as all\r\n\r\nthe other apps. Yeah. But no, but no. Right.\u00a0\r\nAnd it's just like there's it's really hard to\r\n\r\nbridge that that paradigm. See, I got to say\u00a0\r\nparadigm. Nice. Well, yeah, they take that one\r\n\r\noff your bucket list. Um, so I've always I mean\u00a0\r\nthe the Microsoft always push UIA and I get it\r\n\r\nbut I just don't understand the full advantages of\u00a0\r\nyou of user what was it you UIA or something\r\n\r\nversus Iaccessible2 for example. So\u00a0\r\nputting on a hat from three jobs ago. Um that's\r\n\r\nwhy you back you asked me what I was doing. I also\u00a0\r\nafter Starbucks I worked at Google for five years,\r\n\r\nfour years uh on Chrome. But um uh basically the\u00a0\r\nidea behind UIA was that you wouldn't be as tied\r\n\r\nto roles. So like roles as they were defined in MSAA\u00a0\r\nand as they are defined in ARIA were designed for\r\n\r\nWindows 98. Right. Right. And there was only so\u00a0\r\nmany widgets and you couldn't really customize\r\n\r\nthem very much. And they were mapped onto\u00a0\r\nthe set of of roles and different properties.\r\n\r\nAnd if you think about, you know, you set the\u00a0\r\nWayback Machine and think about,\r\n\r\nyou know, I don't know, Word or something looked\u00a0\r\nlike in 1998. Yeah. Everything that you needed\r\n\r\nfor that was available in MSAA. But when in the\u00a0\r\nearly 2000s when Microsoft started changing their\r\n\r\nUI and doing a lot of things to make you know a\u00a0\r\nlot of stuff was more customizable even in Windows\r\n\r\nand and also on the web like people were you know\u00a0\r\nbuilding brand new kinds of UI out of tables and\r\n\r\ndivs and click handlers and all that GUI \u00a0\r\nand there wasn't anything in MSAA to express a lot\r\n\r\nof that stuff and so the idea behind UIA was that\u00a0\r\nyou instead of having just like this is a button\r\n\r\nand it has these states and these actions, it it\u00a0\r\nhad ways to combine behaviors uh which are called\r\n\r\npatterns in in UIA. the iOS accessibility API\u00a0\r\nhas something really similar traits where you\r\n\r\ncan instead of having well you can have a role of\u00a0\r\nbutton you can have a thing that has clickability\r\n\r\nand a pressed state and other things like that.\u00a0\r\nAnd it doesn't have to be a button or it doesn't\r\n\r\nhave to be a menu. it can you can combine\u00a0\r\nall the behaviors that you want to express\r\n\r\nany kind of UI. So that's what UIA was about.\u00a0\r\nIt was also tied in with all the managed.net\r\n\r\nVista sorry, Vista Longhorn stuff,\u00a0\r\nright? yeah, I mean it what you said\r\n\r\nyou work you worked at Google on Chrome.\u00a0\r\nSo what is the well I don't know about the\r\n\r\ncurrent state but what what is the state of\u00a0\r\nimplementation of UIA in browsers other than edge\r\n\r\nI mean okay so I'm I have not looked at\u00a0\r\nthe code but this is what I was told that\r\n\r\nMicrosoft to get Edgium chrome based edge\u00a0\r\nto work with UIA Microsoft implemented it\r\n\r\nBut it's not turned on in Chrome, right?\u00a0\r\nAnd I believe you can build with a flag\r\n\r\nand turn it on, but \u00a0\r\nwhy is it not enabled in Chrome?\r\n\r\nI'm trying to think of what I'm actually\u00a0\r\nallowed to say about this. Yeah, that's fine.\r\n\r\nBut I'm just interested because compatibility\u00a0\r\nmostly like you know but it's a big change\r\n\r\nright switching what accessibility API you're\u00a0\r\nusing is a huge change and like the\r\n\r\nthe potential to break the web is huge and the testing cost is huge and like I I think\r\n\r\nthat's the gist of it but it wasn't really like a\u00a0project that was being seriously considered when I\r\n\r\nwas there. Gotcha. It's Yeah. I mean because\u00a0\r\nlike a screen reader like narrator which is\r\n\r\nthe built-in screen reader from  Microsoft\u00a0\r\nfrom Windows that only uses UIA as far as I know.\r\n\r\nIs that correct? That is correct. But there is a\u00a0\r\ntranslation layer in Windows. Right. So narrator\r\n\r\ncan work with MSAA based apps but not IAccessible2 based apps at least that may have changed but at\r\n\r\none point that was true. So there's a well because\u00a0\r\nIAccessible2 isn't Microsoft's API right like it's\r\n\r\nit's No it's a Linux foundation isn't it? It's\u00a0\r\na yeah I don't know I think it first showed up\r\n\r\nin Netscape I can't remember. but it\u00a0\r\nis well supported across\r\n\r\nbrowsers Chrome, Firefox, etc. So that and\u00a0\r\nthis is one of those places where the web way\r\n\r\nof thinking about things and the operating system\u00a0\r\nway of thinking about things are really different.\r\n\r\nWhen UIA was created, it was created for Windows\u00a0\r\napps, right? And so there's a translation layer\r\n\r\nthat allows old Windows apps to work with. Yeah.\u00a0\r\nUIA based AT and it wasn't really necessarily\r\n\r\nthinking about the web. It was think then it makes\u00a0\r\nperfect sense. But then you got things Yeah. Then\r\n\r\nyou got things like Electron apps which are on\u00a0\r\nbrowser engines but are apps themselves. So yeah,\r\n\r\nI mean it's just mad. I mean there's always\u00a0\r\nsomething new and exciting and and interesting\r\n\r\nand buggy to to work on. So going back to\u00a0\r\nyour current So you're in a, do you plan to\r\n\r\nstay in Europe for an extended period? I'm on\u00a0\r\na two-year visa which I will probably renew but\r\n\r\nyou know things are a little fluid at the moment.\u00a0\r\nYeah. So but I'll be here for at least two years.\r\n\r\nOh, excellent. well hopefully we can catch\u00a0\r\nup when next year TPAC is in Dublin. It is.\r\n\r\nAnd there's something in Dublin in February too\u00a0\r\nthat I'm going to go to. I can't remember what\r\n\r\nit was but some some little conference. Yeah,\u00a0\r\nthere's a really good conference called State\r\n\r\nof the Browser. that it's a one day thing that\u00a0\r\nhappens in London. uh if you get a chance to go\r\n\r\nto that I think it's in February this year but \r\nI presented at one of my rare times of presenting\r\n\r\nand it's just got lots of interesting speakers like\u00a0\r\nlast year it had the guy from the Ladybird\r\n\r\nbrowser the engine and that was interesting\u00a0\r\nbecause I'd learned more about that and\r\n\r\nthere was a guy that I I think he was a German\u00a0\r\nguy or Austrian guy or maybe a Dutch guy I don't\r\n\r\nBut Oliver Lindberg, I think his name was and\u00a0\r\nhe did his all about fonts and that was\r\n\r\na I really enjoyed  his presentation. So\u00a0\r\nanyway, state the browser, I'm just giving a\r\n\r\nshout out for that. I've got my ticket already. \r\nTetrslogical, we sponsor State of the browser. So\r\n\r\num Okay. It's Yeah, it's Send me some info. I'll\u00a0\r\nlook at it. Yeah, the location\r\n\r\nthe venue is is the I can't remember the name of it\u00a0\r\nnow. it's it's somewhere in London\r\n\r\nbut it's but the architecture of the building\u00a0\r\nis really like it's sort of almost organic but\r\n\r\nbrutalist organic. It's quite interesting.\u00a0\r\nI haven't been to London in like 20 years so I\r\n\r\ndon't know but that sounds cool. Yeah. No, no,\u00a0\r\nit is. It is. So, I'm looking forward to that.\r\n\r\nAlways always like to look, you know,\u00a0\r\nforward to things. So, where like you're living\r\n\r\nin a flat or a house? Living in a flat. and\u00a0\r\nyeah, right in the center. And Absolutely.\r\n\r\nYeah. And uh I have a co-working space that I\u00a0\r\ndon't go to very often. And a desk in a\r\n\r\ncorner. And that's where I am right now. That's\u00a0\r\nmy real background behind me. Nice. Yeah. Well,\r\n\r\nI showed you my my real background. Would you\u00a0\r\nwould Yeah, you got it lined up perfectly though\r\n\r\nbecause pillows keep blinking in and out on the\u00a0\r\non the cushy. Yeah. Yeah, that's So, I've got\r\n\r\nsome pillows in the back here. Yeah, it's it's my\u00a0\r\ncomfy zone. Office stroke comfy zone. Okay. So,\r\n\r\nI'm not going to bother to go back to the\u00a0\r\nboard because we're just, you know, chatting about\r\n\r\nstuff. so were you actually involved in WCAG\u00a0one? No, I came in right at the beginning of WCAG 2.\r\n\r\nSo that's that's where I met Wendy, right? Because\u00a0\r\nWendy Wendy worked on WCAG and Wendy worked with\r\n\r\nuh Gregg Vanderhiden at the Trace Center. Yeah,\u00a0\r\nI think when she was in grad school and was\r\n\r\nthe editor of WCAG 1 and then I asked to you know\u00a0\r\ncan I fix this when I was at Microsoft and I went\r\n\r\nI went to a WCAG meeting at CISA in 2000 and\u00a0\r\nwhere they decided to charter WCAG 2 and so I was\r\n\r\nthere at the very beginning of WCAG  2 and I had a\u00a0\r\nlot of experience trying to implement WCAG  one on a\r\n\r\nyou know big modern site which was just not what\u00a0\r\npeople were thinking about right I mean it went\r\n\r\nRec. in 99, but it was mostly written in like\u00a0\r\n97. And I know those now those sound like kind\r\n\r\nof close together, but the web changed so much\u00a0\r\nin those two years. I remember the the first day\r\n\r\nI started Vision Australia, which was in 2001.\u00a0\r\nmy boss at the time, Andrew Arch,  it\r\n\r\nwas just before Christmas, I think. But he just\u00a0 provided me with a paper copy\r\n\r\nof WCAG 1 and said read it. I had very little \u00a0\r\nunderstanding of accessibility. but yeah just\r\n\r\nfour or five years working as a consultant\u00a0\r\nat vision Australia really really helped. But also the\r\n\r\nthe fact that there was lots of people that you\u00a0\r\nknow that had disabilities around at vision\r\n\r\nStroke because low vision and yes uh it was it was\u00a0\r\nreally instructive and helpful for me you know to\r\n\r\nto understand and also to understand\u00a0\r\nthe WG or understand WCAG at the time.\r\n\r\nSo, now that you've you've set up a do you have\u00a0\r\nactual business set up like a I have a an actual\r\n\r\nI have a Dutch corporation. Excellent. Well, you\u00a0\r\nshould give Do you have a website that you Yes,\r\n\r\nit's not quite up yet. Um, so it's Scaled\u00a0\r\nAccessibility Consulting  is the company and\r\n\r\nscaled11y.com is the website. It's a coming soon\u00a0\r\npage right now, but I'm I'm real close.  well,\r\n\r\nplease when when it does actually, you know,\u00a0\r\nyou do actually get some content on there,\r\n\r\nlet let us know and yeah, do my best to promote\u00a0\r\nyour work.  I'm using WordPress and learning\r\n\r\nall about WordPress accessibility and  I haven't\u00a0\r\nreally I've worked with a CMS before but not\r\n\r\nlike building a site from scratch in a CMS. When\u00a0\r\nI've built sites from scratch, it's been, you\r\n\r\nknow, writing code from scratch. and so it's\u00a0\r\nit's interesting, but I decided to go ahead\r\n\r\nand go with WordPress because it's so popular that\u00a0\r\nit seemed like it would be just a really important\r\n\r\nthing to know how to do. What's that? I use that\u00a0\r\nfor my blog. I have for years and and before that\r\n\r\n TPG the TPGI TPG blog was WordPress based. So\u00a0\r\nyeah, I yeah what one thing that I do know is that\r\n\r\nI don't use the new editor, you know, the wizzywig\u00a0\r\neditor. I use the old one because it's got some\r\n\r\nodd name, the new editor, but it's just Yeah. Huh.\u00a0\r\nBlock editor. Yeah, it's a pile of poo. I just use\r\n\r\nthe, you know, I mean, I don't need to have, you\u00a0\r\nknow, lots of intricacies on the site. So,\r\n\r\nhelpful. I think I need to know how all that\u00a0\r\nworks because I'm looking for consulting work,\r\n\r\nright? So, yeah, and it's going to be a thing a\u00a0\r\nlot of people are using and it seems like like a\r\n\r\nlot of things, right? If you know how you can make\u00a0\r\nit accessible, but it's pretty easy to screw it\r\n\r\nup. Yeah, definitely. But I've I've definitely\u00a0\r\nscrewed it up more more often than not.\r\n\r\nso I'd mentioned that you  had talked to Hidde\u00a0de Vries.  he seems to like he seems\r\n\r\nto be everywhere these days like you know sort of\u00a0\r\nwherever I look  he's doing  a conference\r\n\r\nor a talk or or he's at TPAC or whatever. But\u00a0\r\nhe's a really nice guy. So, I'm glad that you two\r\n\r\nmanaged to get in contact and I actually now\u00a0\r\nthat I'm settled, like reaching out to him again\r\n\r\nand being like, \"Okay, let's have lunch is one of\u00a0\r\nthe things on my on my short to-do list.\" Yeah.\r\n\r\nI mean, I had a really nice time when I went to\u00a0\r\nthe Hague because that that's where their offices are.\r\n\r\nbecause he works for the Dutch government and so\u00a0\r\nI went up some huge skyscraper but it was just a\r\n\r\nreally nice and like the Hague is just got a really\u00a0\r\nchill sort of vibe about it even though it's\r\n\r\nyou know like I've always thought the Hague you know\u00a0\r\nthere's all this sort of polish going on I didn't\r\n\r\nsee much going on but I just got a good feeling\u00a0\r\nof about the place something I've been really\r\n\r\nimpressed with it here is that government works\u00a0\r\nreally well here. Like it just it's pretty chill,\r\n\r\nbut everything's very organized and it's really\u00a0\r\ndoc well documented what to do and there aren't\r\n\r\ntoo many steps and and everybody like the people\u00a0\r\nworking in the government offices are nice and\r\n\r\nhelpful and the lines aren't very long and you\u00a0\r\nknow it's like government as government should\r\n\r\nshould should work. unfortunately the yeah\u00a0\r\nthe states I mean the state of the\r\n\r\nof government and in general in the states seems\u00a0\r\nto be on the wane so to speak and interacting\r\n\r\nwith government offices in the US has never been\u00a0\r\nwell in my lifetime never been particularly easy.\r\n\r\nRight. Yeah. Yeah. What do you as regards\u00a0\r\nhealth care, do you get health care or Yeah,\r\n\r\nI can get so the Dutch system it's\u00a0\r\nnot a fully nationalized system. It's a regulated\r\n\r\ninsurance system. and I am I do qualify\u00a0\r\nfor that insurance and it is significantly less\r\n\r\nexpensive than the US.  that's one of\u00a0\r\nthe reasons why I  don't think I can live in\r\n\r\nthe States because the the cost of healthare\u00a0\r\nand just that that that model of health care\r\n\r\njust means that for me to me that you you won't\u00a0\r\nyou're not guaranteed to get the help that you\r\n\r\nneed. I've always worked for big companies and\u00a0\r\nI've always had good insurance. I mean I had a\r\n\r\nfew years without insurance right after college\u00a0\r\nbut I was young and healthy and it I was lucky\r\n\r\nright like but you know since I was in\u00a0\r\nmy late 20s I've always had good insurance I\r\n\r\nalways worked for big companies and I you know\u00a0\r\ngoing independent and actually like going and\r\n\r\nlooking at those marketplaces I was like wow\u00a0\r\nthis is this is hard it's really complicated\r\n\r\nit's really you know and And it got simpler like\u00a0\r\nObamacare sort of simplified what the some of the\r\n\r\nchoices but but it's still still yeah it's still a\u00a0\r\nbig marketplace which which yeah I mean I just\r\n\r\nfind it difficult well I understand it because\u00a0\r\nyou know we live in a capitalist society and and\r\n\r\nthere's plenty of of other aspects of life that\u00a0\r\nare involved with the markets but it's always you\r\n\r\nknow like both education and and healthcare\u00a0\r\nhas always been that that it shouldn't be profit\r\n\r\nmotive you know motivated by profit and I mean\u00a0\r\nit look I mean people complain about the NHS but\r\n\r\nstill um I find and to an extent it's the postcode\u00a0\r\nlottery depending on where you live but I have\r\n\r\nalways found uh the healthcare support to be\u00a0\r\nexcellent in the UK and in Australia as well which\r\n\r\nhad a sort of universal health care but there\u00a0\r\nwas some co-pay but it was all you know very small\r\n\r\nbut for example as far as  prescriptions\u00a0are\r\nconcerned I have to take certain medications\r\n\r\non a regular basis andup until I was 60 they\u00a0\r\nit didn't matter what you for getting that it was\r\n\r\n\u00a310 or this you know approximately \u00a310 a bit less\u00a0\r\nbut now so per prescription so if I was getting\r\n\r\nyou know if I was getting some some antibiotics\u00a0\r\nit'd be \u00a310 but once I turn 60 it's free that's\r\n\r\nnice yeah yeah I mean the benefits of getting old\u00a0\r\nI was surprised because I went into the chemist\r\n\r\nand the guy said to me I'm going to have to pay\u00a0\r\nanymore. I said, \"What?\" Cool. Yeah. Yeah. So,\r\n\r\nit's uh you know Yeah. I mean, 60 doesn't sound\u00a0\r\nas old as it once did. Well, I only Yeah. Well,\r\n\r\nI wish I was 60. I would be 62 in January. But\u00a0\r\nanyway, I mean, that doesn't Yeah, it's just part\r\n\r\nof part of life getting old. It's that  getting\u00a0\r\nolder. But I don't what I don't want to do was\r\n\r\nend up because you I've see sort of especially in\u00a0\r\nthe standards work and the and the W3C there some\r\n\r\nolder people that should really just not\u00a0\r\nretire but just be less you know officious in\r\n\r\ntheir and active in their you know\u00a0\r\nwanting to put their finger in their every pie.\r\n\r\nI don't think there's actually age related.\u00a0\r\nI think there's just some people that just like\r\n\r\nsound of their own voice or or just want to have\u00a0\r\nan opinion on everything. And I've never been one\r\n\r\nof those people. Thank God. Some, you know, I've\u00a0\r\nbeen around standards a long time and some of\r\n\r\nthe people I think you're talking about were like\u00a0\r\nthat when they were 35, too, or 40 or, you know,\r\n\r\nYeah. Yeah. When you Yeah. I mean, I had my times\u00a0\r\nwith with HTML and the WHAT WG group and all\r\n\r\nthose things and that because one of the subjects\u00a0\r\nthat that I talk about that I bring up as topic is\r\n\r\nburnout and I think that I did have a bit of\u00a0\r\na burnout from doing Standards work for several\r\n\r\nyears and then I've sort of got back into it and\u00a0\r\nit seems similar. Well, I'm not saying you had a\r\n\r\nburnout but you were not involved. Now you're\u00a0\r\nstarting to get back involved again. Are you\r\n\r\nenjoying the I am right. Like I get to pick what\u00a0\r\nI work on now. Yeah. And you know in when you work\r\n\r\nfor big company like there's the thing that the\u00a0\r\nwhole company is doing and you need to be involved\r\n\r\nin that and then you've got your own little\u00a0\r\nspecialization area. Yeah. And it's hard to like\r\n\r\ncarve out enough time to do it and do it well.\u00a0\r\nAnd and there's also there's always, you know,\r\n\r\nthe winds change a lot in big companies. There are\u00a0\r\nreorgs and strategy shifts and yada yada yada. And\r\n\r\nyou have to like refocus what you're doing to\u00a0\r\nsurvive. I used to call it surfing reorgs. But\r\n\r\n, you know now I'm independent and one of the\u00a0\r\nthings you know of course that means that I'm you\r\n\r\nknow I'm it used to be very easy to get funding.\u00a0\r\nI just had to convince you know my boss's boss\r\n\r\nright and and now I need to like go out there\u00a0\r\nand and beat the bushes and and look for some\r\n\r\nlook for look for actual funding to do that work, yeah, that can be time consuming and can also,\r\n\r\nyou know, get you down. But I mean I've been\u00a0\r\nyou know like my life has been and my work\r\n\r\nlife has has been I've been gifted\u00a0\r\nwith the opportunities to like I've never\r\n\r\nIworked like I worked for a largeish\u00a0\r\ncompany but you know compared to the likes of\r\n\r\nMicrosoft or whatever but also that I worked\u00a0\r\nyou know for a long period for a accessibility\r\n\r\nprimarily accessibility consultancy. Yeah.\u00a0\r\nAnd so I got to work on stuff and also I\r\n\r\nhad a lot of latitude so I was able to just\u00a0\r\nwork on stuff that interested me right.\r\n\r\nyeah so I'm trying to find the right balance\u00a0\r\nbetween like consulting with companies and\r\n\r\nhelping them make their their presence accessible\u00a0\r\nand helping them build systems that keep it that\r\n\r\nway and doing standards work which is probably\u00a0\r\nmostly grant funded. Um, you know, maybe you can\r\n\r\nget a vendor contract with a tech company every\u00a0\r\nnow and then, but it's mostly going to be grant\r\n\r\nfunded. Yeah. And, you know,  I want to do some\u00a0\r\nof both of that. And then, you know,\r\n\r\nFinn, my my my business partner is, you\u00a0\r\nknow, early in their in their career. And so,\r\n\r\nI'm training them to do some more of the testing.\u00a0\r\nAnd I think they're probably going to do the the\r\n\r\nPDF remediation certification. Seems like\u00a0\r\nthere's a lot of PDF remediation work. So,\r\n\r\nwe I hope that we'll be able to offer sort of a\u00a0\r\nfull spectrum.  they're also really interested\r\n\r\nin accessibility of physical spaces, buildings,\u00a0\r\nand and things like that. And I'm hoping that,\r\n\r\nyou know, as we get a little farther along,\u00a0\r\nwe'll be able to offer businesses this sort\r\n\r\nof full package that includes both digital and\u00a0\r\nphysical presence. do you like the you know\r\n\r\nif you get the more work you get, do you plan on\u00a0\r\nemploying or getting other people involved if we\r\n\r\nhave enough work? Yeah, you know, I haven't\u00a0\r\nprobably something I've thought a lot about is\r\n\r\nlike internships and yeah, how we can bring in\u00a0\r\nand I did a lot of this when I was at other in\r\n\r\nother jobs too. How how can you bring in early\u00a0\r\ncareer engineers who have disabilities? How can\r\n\r\nyou train up people who have a lot of potential\u00a0\r\nbut maybe you know don't get the interview?\r\n\r\nso you know thinking like maybe doing some\u00a0\r\nsome internships or some co-ops or I suspect that\r\n\r\nthere's government funding for that sort of thing.\u00a0\r\nhaven't really looked into it a whole lot. But\r\n\r\nyeah, you know, I think I think growing to, you\u00a0\r\nknow, certainly bigger than the two of us. I don't\r\n\r\nI don't want to be a unicorn or have a hockey\u00a0\r\nstick or blah blah just I just want to do work,\r\n\r\nright? I don't want to I've already managed big\u00a0\r\ncompanies. I don't want to do that anymore. but\r\n\r\nyou know if we if we have enough clients then yeah\u00a0\r\nI would absolutely want to do you know to expand\r\n\r\nthe pool of people who can work in this field and\u00a0\r\nalso obviously to partner with other consultants\r\n\r\nand other companies that that do this kind of\u00a0\r\nwork. Yeah. You should also Hidde knows\r\n\r\nthem. There's the guy there's a company called\u00a0\r\nAbra which is they have a a um a Dutch company and\r\n\r\nthey have a uh they specialize in in mobile um uh\u00a0\r\nthe automated testing or or semi-automated testing\r\n\r\nbut they also do some some testing. But there's\u00a0\r\na guy called Jan [\u00a0__\u00a0] I think his name is. I\r\n\r\nnever know how to pronounce these people's names.\u00a0\r\nBut he is um head of the or he's the chair of the\r\n\r\nuh mobile accessibility task force. Okay. But\u00a0\r\nhe's one of the the people that that work there.\r\n\r\nAnother guy called Paul I think his name\u00a0\r\nis. Seen that name. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway,\r\n\r\n I'd sort of, you know, have a look Hidde knows\u00a0\r\nthem, ask because I'm sure it would just be nice\r\n\r\nto for you to hook up, not hook up, but you know,\u00a0\r\nsort of to meet them because they they're local.\r\n\r\nThey live in Dutch land. One of my  what what\u00a0\r\na person that I worked with for many years\r\n\r\nHans Hillen started on the same day. I don't know\u00a0\r\nif you ever I've I've been in some meetings with\r\n\r\nhim but I don't know. Yeah. Hans Hans is sort of\u00a0\r\nlike he he has a deep level of knowledge.  but\r\n\r\nhe doesn't have a social you know presence and\u00a0\r\nso people don't know him as well unlike me who\r\n\r\nhas a very surface level of knowledge but\u00a0\r\nhas a social presence a deeper social presence\r\n\r\nbut yeah he's Dutch u I don't even know why why\u00a0\r\nI was thinking see I'm just thinking of all the\r\n\r\nDutch people you know right yeah yeah but no\u00a0\r\nbut Hans lives in New Zealand now anyway he's\r\n\r\nstill working at TPG but he and I started\u00a0\r\nit on the same day in 2006 at TPG.  anyway,\r\n\r\nyeah, sorry. It ends up like I don't mean to to\u00a0\r\nbring the topic of conversation around to myself,\r\n\r\nbut it just seems to Yeah, that's good, you\u00a0\r\nknow. it just seems to happen. Yeah. I'm just\r\n\r\ntrying to think of like reminds me of all these\u00a0\r\nthings, you know, especially talking to someone\r\n\r\nuh such as yourself who I've known for  years\u00a0on a you know, some level and interacting with\r\n\r\nin various situations. it just reminds me of\u00a0\r\nYeah. all these things from the Yeah, that's part\r\n\r\nof what happens when you get old. True. You know,\u00a0\r\nwhat has gone before is greater than what\r\n\r\nwhat will come in the future. Hopefully. I don't\u00a0\r\nknow. People in my family live into their 90s. And\r\n\r\nmy dad didn't retire till he was almost 80. So,\u00a0\r\nyeah. Well, I don't plan on retiring till I'm\r\n\r\n70. Not because I Well, I mean, I enjoy doing this\u00a0\r\nstuff anyway, but but also I've got, you know,\r\n\r\nI've got a 16-year-old daughter and a 21-year-old\u00a0\r\ndaughter and they both still live at home. Well,\r\n\r\nthe 16 year old, of course, but the 21y old and\u00a0\r\nuh so I  just need to generate money to\r\n\r\nfeed their habits, you know, their their\u00a0\r\nlifestyles. Yeah. My wife works as well,\r\n\r\nso we both work full-time. Yeah. So, how how\u00a0\r\nare you finding the cost of living over in\r\n\r\nAmsterdam? It's it's a more complicated answer\u00a0\r\nthan you would expect. So, I came from Seattle,\r\n\r\nwhich is one a very expensive place. Like, it's\u00a0\r\nnot it's right behind it. It's not quite up there\r\n\r\nwith like London, New York, San Francisco,\u00a0\r\nbut it's not too far behind there. Yeah. So,\r\n\r\ncompared to that, it seems pretty affordable.\u00a0\r\nBut there is a housing crisis and a lot of\r\n\r\nlandlords won't rent to immigrants and it's,\u00a0\r\nyou know, it ends up being kind of pricey, but\r\n\r\nin comparison to to Seattle, it's less than\u00a0\r\nSeattle, but also like, you know, I had a whole\r\n\r\nhouse, right? and I bought my house before the\u00a0\r\ninterest rates went up and you know so it's\r\n\r\na little hard to do apples to apples. Groceries\u00a0\r\nare definitely cheaper. I don't have to have a\r\n\r\ncar that's definitely cheaper. I bought a bike.\u00a0\r\nYeah. I Yeah. I love like just watching you know\r\n\r\nbecause a lot of the times when I go to Amsterdam\u00a0\r\nor mainly Amsterdam I've been to just watching\r\n\r\nthe people on the bikes you know just sitting\u00a0\r\nthere and some having a coffee just watching\r\n\r\nthe world go by. It's such a wonderful place for\u00a0\r\ndoing that. It really is. Yeah. And you know,\r\n\r\nI the first few times I tried to ride a bike here,\u00a0\r\nit was like, there's every roof people everywhere\r\n\r\nand how does this work? And and you know,\u00a0\r\nlike not only are there bike lanes everywhere,\r\n\r\nthere's left turn lanes for bikes. Like it's\u00a0\r\nYeah, it's serious. And and I realize the closest\r\n\r\nthing I the closest analogy I can come to is that\u00a0\r\nriding a bike here is like driving in Los Angeles.\r\n\r\nYou just have to be you have to be, you\u00a0\r\nknow, a protozoa floating with the flow,\r\n\r\nright? Yeah. You just got to get into that  stream. I um I spent some time in Thailand\r\n\r\nin in the in a smaller city in the south of\u00a0\r\nThailand and I had a moped there and yeah,\r\n\r\ndriving around there is exactly it's like you go\u00a0\r\ninto a stream and just got to follow with the flow\r\n\r\nand just Yeah. It's it's incredible.  okay,\u00a0\r\nso you're still finding your feet in\r\n\r\nAmsterdam and in you know you work-wise you you're\u00a0\r\nstarting to get some clients or customers getting\r\n\r\nthere. Yeah. So things are things are positive\u00a0\r\nfor you which things are positive. Yeah. you know,\r\n\r\nI'm working on the I just started working\u00a0\r\non the SVG AAM and I'm working with Lola on\r\n\r\naccessibility compat data and you know, that's\u00a0\r\nas you may remember like testing and automated\r\n\r\ntesting and being able to test browsers\u00a0\r\nand compare them and have you know again\r\n\r\nthat's what the AAM were about too is like writing\u00a0\r\ndown what the browser's doing and comparing it.\r\n\r\nACD I think is kind of the next step in that\u00a0\r\nand you know if anybody remembers Intel user\r\n\r\nagents in WCAG one and then accessibility\u00a0\r\nsupported was the WCAG 2 version of that but it\r\n\r\nit was kind of you know vibe based and so trying\u00a0\r\nto get to a place where it's not right where you\r\n\r\ndon't have to expert on the market definitely\u00a0\r\nsome interesting discussions around that around\r\n\r\naccessibly supported because quite often I\u00a0\r\nmean or quite often I on occasion I use that\r\n\r\nas an argument as to why something fails wag\u00a0\r\nor whatever because even though if it's not\r\n\r\naccessibly supported like you know if enough\u00a0\r\nof the the assistive technology people use don't\r\n\r\nsupport it or the majority doesn't support\u00a0\r\nit then then it's not accessibly supported\r\n\r\nin my but how do you know that as a regular web\u00a0\r\ndeveloper like there's just you know you I mean\r\n\r\nyou got you know even among the crowd we hang\u00a0\r\nout with there's a lot of like discussion and\r\n\r\npositioning and is it or isn't it and and then\u00a0\r\nyou know you got all the different at and the\r\n\r\ndifferent operating systems different language\u00a0\r\nmarkets you know something that's accessibility\r\n\r\nsupported in English might not be accessibility\u00a0\r\nsupported in some other language um And you know,\r\n\r\nif you don't speak English, then that doesn't\u00a0\r\nreally do you any good, right? Um, and it's a\r\n\r\nreally complicated thing. And so I think that's\u00a0\r\nwhere having I mean, just like your your HTML 5\r\n\r\nacid test thing, right? Like just having some data\u00a0\r\nthat says like these are the things we expect and\r\n\r\nthis is where it works and doesn't. Also, that's\u00a0\r\nwhat I've tried to do with the uh the HTML screen\r\n\r\nreader support. Yeah. It's, you know, \u00a0\r\n it's not trying to to to provide it's just\r\n\r\ntrying to provide like an easy way for people who\u00a0\r\ndon't have a lot of time to be able to compare,\r\n\r\nyou know, and to understand how how assistive\u00a0\r\ntechnology screen readers in particular you know,\r\n\r\nsort of interpret and convey the the semantics of HTML. It's important for people to\r\n\r\nunderstand, but yes, a lot of it and this\u00a0\r\nACD stuff that you're doing with Lola that\r\n\r\nI'm tangentally involved in I think that will\u00a0\r\nbe helpful as well because it it provides that\r\n\r\nyeah that those data points that people need to\u00a0\r\nunderstand and implement things appropriately,\r\n\r\nright? Like I was talking before about the the\u00a0\r\nthe way that you know web people and operating\r\n\r\nsystem people don't understand each other right\u00a0\r\nand like if you look at it there's a bunch of\r\n\r\nlayers right there's markup and then there's a\u00a0\r\nDOM and then there's uh internal accessibility\r\n\r\nrepresentation and then there's mapping to you\u00a0\r\nknow half a dozen accessibility API operating\r\n\r\nsystem accessibility APIs and then there's every\u00a0\r\nat on those operating systems mostly consuming\r\n\r\nthose APIs but sometimes going back over here too\u00a0\r\nand you know so like the the screen reader support\r\n\r\none works all the way out here in user land and\u00a0\r\nuh something like axe works all the way there in\r\n\r\nmarkup land and WPT is sort of that internal\u00a0\r\nrepresentation but there there aren't there\r\n\r\nisn't data about a lot of those layers except you\u00a0\r\nknow maybe in Aaron Levthal's brain right like and\r\n\r\nand Aaron Leventhal has a wonderful big brain\u00a0\r\nbut it's difficult for other people to access yeah\r\n\r\nyeah exactly it's it's funny like saying about\u00a0\r\nAaron. He says that like he's one of the people\r\n\r\nI never quite like I've talked to him over the\u00a0\r\nyears, but I never quite felt comfortable in his\r\n\r\npresence. Always feel. But that's just me. That's\u00a0\r\nI mean he and I worked together pretty closely at\r\n\r\nat at Google and he just, you know, when you\u00a0\r\nhave a question, you could just say, \"Hey,\r\n\r\nhow does this work?\" And if he doesn't remember,\u00a0\r\nhe'll just go look in the code, right? And yeah,\r\n\r\nbut not everybody can go look in the Chrome code\u00a0\r\nand know where to look. And you know, I mean,\r\n\r\nnot only is it an enormous codebase, but it's also\u00a0\r\nC++ and 25 years old and, you know, um it's\r\n\r\nnot an easy thing to just to just go look. And\u00a0\r\nso having some more, you know, testdriven ways\r\n\r\nof looking at that information and particularly\u00a0\r\nhaving it as automated as possible so that it can\r\n\r\nstay fresh without having to, you know, pay armies\u00a0\r\nof testers, which nobody wants to do anymore.\r\n\r\nYeah, that was one of the things that was nice at\u00a0\r\nStarbucks was they still had QA. So, I taught all\r\n\r\nthe QA people how to do accessibility testing.\u00a0\r\nIt was great. Well, that's cool. Um, okay. So,\r\n\r\nwe've been speak for over an hour now, so it's\u00a0\r\nprobably time to um wind it up. Yeah. Do you\r\n\r\nwant me to answer one of your quiz questions? ,\u00a0\r\nyeah, if you want. , I I'll just hold on a sec.\r\n\r\nI'll  I mean this WCAG 3. Oh boy. Okay.\u00a0\r\nHow what what's your what's your gut feeling about\r\n\r\nthe direction? Did I mean I do it? It seems like\u00a0\r\nthey are starting to get their act together. Well,\r\n\r\nthat's good. I'm not super involved in WCAG 3.\u00a0\r\nI you know when they were when when people were\r\n\r\ndeciding whether to do 3.0 or do 2. a million\u00a0\r\nI was more in favor of 2. million because of\r\n\r\nbackward compatibility and the legal references\u00a0\r\nand you know I was also working for big company\r\n\r\nat the time. Um yeah well you do know are\u00a0\r\nyou aware that there's now talk of a two dot\r\n\r\nx and I think that's probably needed because 3.0\u00a0\r\nis still a long way off. Yeah. Yeah. And you know,\r\n\r\nbut the backward compatibility is super important\u00a0\r\nand I know a lot of people want to not have that\r\n\r\nand the reasons aren't like there's nothing\u00a0\r\nwrong with the reasons. It's just that in the\r\n\r\nsame way that web and operating system people\u00a0\r\ndon't talk to each other. Sometimes standards\r\n\r\npeople and business people just really don't\u00a0\r\nunderstand each other. Yeah. And you know the\r\n\r\nfact that WCAG 2 is the reference for every law\u00a0\r\naround the world Yeah. has been a huge driver of\r\n\r\nstuff actually getting done because there's some\u00a0\r\nclarity about what it is you're supposed to do.\r\n\r\nThat's um one one of the that's why I think\u00a0\r\nthat the ongoing work on WCAG\r\n\r\n2 backlog which is essentially you know putting\u00a0\r\ntime into yeah into updating and and making\r\n\r\nand clarifying stuff in the in the volumous\r\ntechniques documents whatever I think this\r\n\r\nis really important work because it affects you\u00a0\r\nknow like yeah I mean I'm interested interested\r\n\r\nin WCAG 3. I'm interested in the direction but you\u00a0\r\nknow boots on the ground today everybody uses WCAG\u00a02\r\n\r\nand even after WG 3 comes out it's going to take\u00a0\r\nthe conformance model is so different it's going\r\n\r\nto take a long time for regulation to catch up.\u00a0\r\nSo yeah I mean I'm always wondering will you know\r\n\r\nwill it be taken up before I retire before I\u00a0\r\ndie? I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised if\r\n\r\nWukg 3 ships before you retire, but I think it'll\u00a0\r\nbe at least another 5 years before regulations are\r\n\r\nable to integrate it because it's so different.\u00a0\r\nYeah. And you know, a lot of governments around\r\n\r\nthe world are in a state where they're not getting\u00a0\r\na whole lot done right now. And and that wasn't\r\n\r\ntrue in 2008, right? like there was a lot more\u00a0\r\nmomentum behind regulation even in the US than\r\n\r\nthere is now. We don't think that the uh EAA has\u00a0\r\nsort of given things a jolt because it does it it\r\n\r\nseems from from you know from my side where where\u00a0\r\npeople are you know get in contact with us and ask\r\n\r\nus about work. Um it seems to me the EAA is one\u00a0\r\nis an important driver in it is. Yeah. Yeah. The\r\n\r\nthings like the you know there's always this this\u00a0\r\npeople say oh you know that it shouldn't be about\r\n\r\nyou know sort of the the stick. It should be more\u00a0\r\nabout the carrot. But yeah just saying that you\r\n\r\nknow oh well it's a nice thing to do and it's\u00a0\r\nthe right thing to do. It just doesn't always\r\n\r\ncut it. I mean, you know, companies don't give a\u00a0\r\nshit really in the end about those things or or\r\n\r\nprobably that is a bit harsh. They do care. They\u00a0\r\ndo have concern about but it's it's the profit\r\n\r\nmotive is much more to the fore  you know\u00a0\r\nthey they're looking after their investments and\r\n\r\ntheir their shareholders. So unless you unless\u00a0\r\nyou the government comes along and regulates it,\r\n\r\nit got to happen. Something I've seen happen\u00a0\r\na lot is that the existence of some regulation\r\n\r\nor a lawsuit gets the process started and then\u00a0\r\nthey hire someone like you or me to go and teach\r\n\r\nthe teams what it means and how to do it. And for\u00a0\r\nthe most part, most people who work on products,\r\n\r\nonce they know it's a thing and know basically\u00a0\r\nhow to do it, they want to do a good job. They try\r\n\r\nto do a good job. Most people do. Not everybody\u00a0\r\nand not everybody's boss, but for the most part,\r\n\r\nif you have a team and you teach them how to do\u00a0\r\nit, they're going to want to do it right. Yeah.\r\n\r\nAnd and that is everything. But the, you know, and\u00a0\r\nthe people on that team who are actually writing\r\n\r\nthe code and doing the testing and making the\u00a0\r\ngraphics high enough contrast and all of those\r\n\r\nthings, like what got them started sometimes was\u00a0\r\nthat there was a a stick. Yeah. Their boss got hit\r\n\r\nwith a stick and and that pushed it up the\u00a0\r\npriority list. But however they start, whether\r\n\r\nit's carrot or stick, you know, there's also a\u00a0\r\nlot of stories about like some executive has a\r\n\r\nkid with a disability and starts an initiative and\u00a0\r\nyada yada. both of those things can happen,\r\n\r\nbut it's in the end it doesn't really matter how\u00a0\r\nit happen. Doesn't matter. It it happens. And so\r\n\r\nyeah, so I like I'm not anti- legislation. I think\u00a0\r\nlegislation you know government, big government\r\n\r\nis a good thing. my particular bit but yeah\u00a0\r\nso WCAG 3 and I'm well I attend the meetings\r\n\r\nand I'm following I follow along with it but\u00a0\r\nI haven't put a lot of time into actually\r\n\r\nuh I've still like I'm always very cautious I'm\u00a0\r\nfinding my feet with it with stuff so I tend to\r\n\r\nyou know I do stuff that that I work on stuff that\u00a0\r\nthat I feel confident in working on it and I\r\n\r\njust listen and and and try to understand the flow\u00a0\r\nof you know discussion that continues\r\n\r\nfor these these sort of developments. I\u00a0\r\nmean it's a it's a wonderful uh um opportunity\r\n\r\nplace to to be. I think you know talking\u00a0\r\nabout the W3C and the working groups I sort of\r\n\r\nlike I feel like I've come home but being more you\u00a0\r\nknow involved and it's just you know there's new\r\n\r\nfaces old faces like Janina Sajka I mean I remember\u00a0\r\nbeing involved in in the HTML task force 15\r\n\r\nyears ago and there she you know it's sort of\u00a0\r\nlike it's just yeah old faces and new faces and\r\n\r\nBut and it's still Yeah, I'm thoroughly enjoying\u00a0\r\nit. That's what I should say. I really I really\r\n\r\nlike working with W3C. I always have like the\u00a0\r\npeople are so nice and everybody's really smart\r\n\r\nand like really trying to get things done. And you\u00a0\r\nknow, recently, just to echo your point, it's one\r\n\r\nof the few places where I encounter co-workers who\u00a0\r\nare older than me. Um, and you know, I'm a little\r\n\r\nbit younger than the baby boomers. Not a ton, but\u00a0\r\nI'm a little bit younger than the baby boomers.\r\n\r\nSo for most of my career there were like lots and\u00a0\r\nlots of people who were 15 or 20 years older than\r\n\r\nme and they're all retired now. Um and it and W3C\r\nI still run into people who are in that and it it\r\n\r\nfeels much more comfortable than I'm just not\u00a0\r\nused to being the old fart. Right. Yeah. Well\r\n\r\nthat's yeah but that's yeah that's on that on\u00a0\r\nthat note that is what I want to like I don't\r\n\r\nwant to become a dinosaur and so I always but I\u00a0\r\nthink that we're all of us are lucky that is those\r\n\r\nthat who are involved in this work is that it is\u00a0\r\nalways like is you're never doing the same thing.\r\n\r\nYou're doing something you know different and\u00a0\r\nnovel and and you're pushing the boundaries and\r\n\r\npushing yourself to understand things which which\u00a0\r\nyou don't get the opportunity in every job to do.\r\n\r\nSo I think we're all you really don't. Yeah, we're\u00a0\r\nreally quite lucky. That's why I've continued\r\n\r\ndoing W3C work even when I had to do it, you know,\u00a0\r\noutside of 40 hours. that it's just and it\r\n\r\nalso has a big impact, right? I mean, you you get\u00a0\r\nan accessibility feature into the HTML spec like\r\n\r\nthat and you had a browser to implement it like\u00a0\r\nthat matters. That matters, right? That impacts\r\n\r\neverybody. I'll always have the main element as\u00a0\r\nwell. Yes. And main is awesome, right? But it was\r\n\r\na really simple thing, but it was such a lot of\u00a0\r\nwork. It really it details and summary was mine.\r\n\r\nYeah. Well, that was nice. Yeah. I mean, there's\u00a0\r\nsome really nice features  in HTML,\r\n\r\nbut it's just getting them to work. the the other\u00a0\r\nthing because I I don't know at the time but when\r\n\r\nuh canvas was being developed and implemented\u00a0\r\nyou know or specified there was lots of push back\r\n\r\nabout using canvas for interactive UI\u00a0\r\n interaction and whatever and the\r\n\r\nrepresentation of uof controls etc. and\u00a0\r\nsemantics. But I I just recently picked up on\r\n\r\nsomething and I always thought that at some point\u00a0\r\npeople are going to use canvas to build UI and I\r\n\r\nbut it never really happened in any big way. But\u00a0\r\njust recently there's some can't remember the name\r\n\r\nof I I'll put it when I put together the uh the\u00a0\r\npost associated with this. I'll put it on there.\r\n\r\nBut essentially some mobile framework that just\u00a0\r\nuses canvas to create UI all over the place. Uh\r\n\r\nyeah, Google had one of those too. And I mean,\u00a0\r\nyou know, we've come full circle, right? Because\r\n\r\nHTML was a super high level language. It's\u00a0\r\nall declarative and all the like you don't\r\n\r\nneed to know about how any of the gui inside\u00a0\r\nthe computer works. And then five years later,\r\n\r\npeople were using it to blitz pixels to the screen\u00a0\r\nand having to build all that gui again. Right.\r\n\r\nBut there was the the the uh thing was is the\u00a0\r\nperson at the time that that uh was um writing\r\n\r\nthe specifications for for such or it had a lot of\u00a0\r\ninfluence.  just decided that they didn't want\r\n\r\npeople to be able to do UI in canvas.\u00a0\r\nBut just like anything, I mean, you know,\r\n\r\nthey the when, you know, a div and a span were\u00a0\r\ndeveloped, they even want those to to become\r\n\r\nuser interface elements potentially. But if\u00a0\r\nyou add, you know, you add on the the behaviors,\r\n\r\netc. People will find a way to use things in the\u00a0\r\nway that you don't want it used or you don't it's\r\n\r\nnot specified to be used. And so you we've got\u00a0\r\nto, you know, come to terms with that and try to\r\n\r\nmake it accessible regardless. And again, that was\u00a0\r\nthe idea behind UIA, right? That you could combine\r\n\r\ndescriptions of behaviors and come up with new\u00a0\r\nUI widgets and describe how they worked without\r\n\r\nhaving to come up with a name and change windows.\u00a0\r\nUh, and I really wish that Arya had additive\r\n\r\nthings. I've been saying this for years, right?\u00a0\r\nLike the thing where if you put role equals link\r\n\r\non a heading, it stops being a heading. Like being\u00a0\r\nable to say that this thing is is a heading button\r\n\r\nlink would be awesome. But there's ARIA doesn't\u00a0\r\nwork like that. Is there is there a reason? Oh,\r\n\r\n[\u00a0__\u00a0] Yeah, we should do people want a heading\u00a0\r\nbutton. That's the reason, right? We should do\r\n\r\nthis. we should have a further conversation.\u00a0\r\nI'm already inviting people back everybody I\r\n\r\ntalk to. So yeah, we can go into a deeper dive in\u00a0\r\nour next meeting. What I was going to say was\r\n\r\nthat I will be in um I've been asked to present\u00a0\r\nat a  Dutch government\r\n\r\nconference is happening in Utrech. Okay. In \u00a0\r\nMarch. So maybe worth something. Yeah, you worth\r\n\r\nchecking out. Uh Hiddie, I've got the gig via Hiddie\u00a0\r\nbecause we're working on the WCAG-EM together. He's\r\n\r\ngoing to do a talk on WCAG 3 and I'm going to do\u00a0\r\na talk on the WCAG-EM. So So I'm going to read it. I\r\n\r\nimplemented that at Starbucks actually. We did a\u00a0\r\nwe and built a whole automated system that used\r\n\r\nGoogle Analytics data to\u00a0\r\nfigure out what were the most important things and\r\n\r\nand build the that yeah you could provide because\u00a0\r\nthat's one of the things we've been thinking about\r\n\r\nI mean what we essentially tried to do with WCAG-EM is\u00a0\r\njust bring it into the the modern day and and for\r\n\r\nhow we all know that that that likes of people\u00a0\r\nsuch as James Craig will will make it clear that\r\n\r\nthat that WCAG is about the web accessibility, but\u00a0\r\nwe all know that that it's that WCAG is being used\r\n\r\nto test the accessibility of of mobile\u00a0\r\napplications and and desktop applications and\r\n\r\noperations desktop applications and and document\u00a0\r\nlike that's the part of the thing was you know\r\n\r\nit's always been the web XP guidelines, but\u00a0\r\nthen then it was it covers PDF. PDF's not you\r\n\r\nknow like yes it's primarily but it's it's still\u00a0\r\nit's a document format that it's easier to make\r\n\r\na P like the parallels between PDF and a web\u00a0\r\npage are a lot more than the parallels between\r\n\r\nyou know Chrome OS and a web page right like and\u00a0\r\neverything is being tested against WCAG because\r\n\r\nof WCAG ICT But WCAG like WCAG was was written\u00a0\r\nand designed with the assumption that the\r\n\r\nstuff you were working on was rendered inside\u00a0\r\na browser on an operating system and that lots\r\n\r\nof things were abstracted away from you and then\u00a0\r\ntrying to bring it back so it covers everything.\r\n\r\nAnd you know at some level UI is UI and a lot\u00a0\r\nof the things are applicable but when you start\r\n\r\ndigging into how stuff works and why it's broken\u00a0\r\nand then it gets really messy. Yeah. But that's\r\n\r\nYeah. But that that is sort of the implementation\u00a0\r\ndetails or the remediation details rather than\r\n\r\nyou know as you say when I mean when I look\u00a0\r\nat an app on my mobile phone I see UI\r\n\r\nand I see you know that I can use the built-in\u00a0\r\nscreen reader in iOS to interact with it. It's\r\n\r\nit's still doing the same sort of stuff. It's\u00a0\r\ntelling me whether it's a button, whether it's,\r\n\r\nyou know, pressable and blah blah blah. And it's\u00a0\r\nthere's not a lot of difference between that and\r\n\r\nthe sort of information that's provided about the\u00a0\r\nUI on it that's created voiceover on iOS is very\r\n\r\ngood about making that experience consistent. But\u00a0\r\nif you if you go to say Windows and you're trying\r\n\r\nto you look at the difference between a native\u00a0\r\napp and a web app that look exactly the same.\r\n\r\nYeah. The screen reader experience is radically\u00a0\r\ndifferent. and and and that's confusing. Yeah,\r\n\r\nit you know there have gotten to be with ARIA\u00a0\r\nand various other things that happened after\r\n\r\nArya you can make them a little more consistent\u00a0\r\nbut there's still this sort of underlying thing\r\n\r\nthat web pages are scrollable documents full of\u00a0\r\ntext and links and maybe images and the way that\r\n\r\nat works with them has a lot of that built into\u00a0\r\nit. Yeah. And that's not true for, I don't know,\r\n\r\na video player or uh this, you know, Zoom app I'm\u00a0\r\nlooking at, right? Which is probably Electron,\r\n\r\nbut yeah. Well, yeah, it could be. It's\u00a0\r\njust like the the Firefox browser. I mean,\r\n\r\nthe UI of that is built with HTML as far as I\u00a0\r\nknow. I believe that that's true. Yeah. Yeah. So,\r\n\r\nbut yeah, I mean, it just looks like, you know,\u00a0\r\nand some of Chromes is too. Yeah. So there's\r\n\r\nthere's that blurring and you know with the\u00a0\r\nElectron apps essentially JavaScript and right\r\n\r\nHTML and stuff. So anyway, we could rap it on for\u00a0\r\nhours and hours about Yeah, we could. But yeah,\r\n\r\nwe I need to go and have my uh my dinner. Yeah,\u00a0\r\nme too. You probably need to as well. And uh\r\n\r\nthank you for taking the time to chat. Absolutely.\u00a0\r\nIt was it was really fun to chat. And you know,\r\n\r\nif I could just put a little plug in there,\u00a0\r\nright? Like I'm looking for I'm looking for\r\n\r\nconsulting contracts. I'm looking for funding for\u00a0\r\nSVG AM and I'm looking for funding for ACD.\r\n\r\nAnd um I really you know I would like to be\u00a0\r\nable to do a balance of commercial contracts\r\n\r\nand standards work and have you know both of those\u00a0\r\nin my life. Uh very a noble uh cause a very noble\r\n\r\nuh desire. Um what I will say is that I as it\u00a0\r\nas is clear we've known each other for for years\r\n\r\nand we've been around the same um you know sort of\u00a0\r\nstandard space community accessibility. I would\r\n\r\nwholeheartedly suggest any corporation or\u00a0\r\nany organization would be very lucky to\r\n\r\nhave you and your expertise. Thank you. That's\u00a0\r\nreally nice. Thank you. I mean I just tell it\r\n\r\nlike it is. That's even better. Yeah. So, uh, so\u00a0\r\ngood luck and, uh, I will, uh, talk to you again\r\n\r\nsoon. Hopefully see you sooner rather than later.\u00a0\r\nYeah, I'm sure I will see you soon. Thank you for\r\n\r\nbeing on fireside chat, the resurrection.\u00a0\r\nThank you for having me. Good night. Bye.\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/details>\n<h2>Some stuff discussed<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Accessibility\u00a0<abbr style=\"font-style: italic; font-weight: 600;\" title=\"Application Programming Interface\">APIs:<\/abbr><\/strong><br \/>\nOperating systems and other platforms provide a set of interfaces that expose information about\u00a0<a id=\"ref-for-dfn-object-2\" class=\"termref informative internalDFN\" href=\"https:\/\/w3c.github.io\/aria\/#dfn-object\" data-link-type=\"dfn\">objects<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a id=\"ref-for-dfn-event-2\" class=\"termref informative internalDFN\" href=\"https:\/\/w3c.github.io\/aria\/#dfn-event\" data-link-type=\"dfn\">events<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0<a id=\"ref-for-assistive-technology-8\" class=\"internalDFN\" href=\"https:\/\/w3c.github.io\/aria\/#assistive-technology\" data-link-type=\"dfn\">assistive technologies<\/a>. Assistive technologies use these interfaces to get information about and interact with those\u00a0<a id=\"ref-for-dfn-widget-5\" class=\"termref informative internalDFN\" href=\"https:\/\/w3c.github.io\/aria\/#dfn-widget\" data-link-type=\"dfn\">widgets<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Examples of accessibility\u00a0<abbr title=\"Application Programming Interfaces\">APIs<\/abbr>\u00a0are\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows\/win32\/winauto\/microsoft-active-accessibility\">Microsoft Active Accessibility<\/a> (MSAA),\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows\/win32\/winauto\/entry-uiauto-win32\">Microsoft User Interface Automation <\/a>(UIA),\u00a0<abbr title=\"Microsoft Active Accessibility\">MSAA<\/abbr>\u00a0with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows\/win32\/winauto\/iaccessibleex\"><abbr title=\"User Interface Automation\">UIA<\/abbr>\u00a0Express<\/a>, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/documentation\/appkit\/nsaccessibility\">Mac\u00a0<abbr title=\"OS Ten\">OS X<\/abbr>\u00a0Accessibility Protocol<\/a> (AXAPI), the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org\/atk\/\">Linux\/Unix Accessibility Toolkit<\/a> (ATK)\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/gnome.pages.gitlab.gnome.org\/at-spi2-core\/libatspi\/\">Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface<\/a> (AT-SPI), and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.linuxfoundation.org\/accessibility\/iaccessible2\/start\">IAccessible2<\/a> (IA2).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/2026.stateofthebrowser.com\/\">State of the Browser 2026<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/\">HTML5Accessibility<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/w3c.github.io\/svg-aam\/\">SVG AAM<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.w3.org\/WAI\/\">W3C Web Accessibility Initiative<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/w3c.github.io\/wai-wcag-em\/\">WCAG-EM<\/a><\/li>\n<li lang=\"nl\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncdt.nl\/\">Nationaal Congres Digitale Toegankelijkheid<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Manic Street Preachers &#8211; IfWhiteAmericaToldTheTruthForOneDayIt&#8217;sWorldWouldFallApart<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GcuPL8n9I0g?si=s_JqyZXZzCSEEjOu\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<details>\n<summary>Lyrics<\/summary>\n<pre>Next Thursday you're invited to watch Rising Tide's live coverage\r\nOf a gala tribute in salute to Ronald Reagon\r\nHost Hailey Barbone joins special guest Lady Margret Thatcher\r\nIn celebrating the former president's 83rd birthday\r\nTickets are one thousand dollars a plate, but you can see the event free on GOP tv\r\nImages of perfection, suntan and napalm\r\nGrenada, Haiti, Poland, Nicaragua\r\nWho shall we choose for our morality\r\nI'm thinking right now of hollywood tragedy\r\nBig mac, smack, phoenix, please smile y'all\r\nCuba, Mexico can't cauterize our discipline\r\nYour idols speak so much of the abyss\r\nYet your morals only run as deep as the surface\r\nCool, groovy, morning, fine\r\nTipper Gore was a friend of mine\r\nI love a free country\r\nThe stars and stripes and an apple for mummy (conservative say)\r\nThere ain't no black in the union jack (democrat say)\r\nThere ain't enough white in the stars and stripes\r\nCompton, Harlem, a pimp fucked a priest\r\nThe white man has just found a new moral saviour\r\nVital stats how white was their skin\r\nUnimportant just another inner city drive-by thing\r\nMorning, fine, serve your first coffee of the day\r\nReal privilege, it will take your problems all away\r\nNumber one, the best, no excuse from me\r\nI am here to serve the moral majority\r\nCool, groovy, morning, fine\r\nTipper Gore was a friend of mine\r\nI love a free country\r\nThe stars and stripes and an apple for mummy\r\nZapruder, the first to masturbate\r\nThe world's first taste of crucified grace\r\nAnd I and I'll fight in the union jack (and we say)\r\nThere's too much white in the stars and stripes\r\nFuck the Brady Bill\r\nFuck the Brady Bill\r\nIf God made man they say\r\nSam Colt made an equal\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have known Cynthia Shelly since the early days of the HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0 when we were co-editors. Cynthia has had a long career in accessibility, she worked at Microsoft on the initial Edge browser engine, overseeing the accessibility implementation of Microsoft UI Automation (UIA) Developed an Accessibility program while working at Starbucks. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-htmlaccessibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1847,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions\/1847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/html5accessibility.com\/stuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}