John F Croston III

I’m Not Dead Yet (In a British Accent)

Posted on December 6, 2011 by John F Croston III

I know a few of you have asked if I had written anything on my blog in a while and I have had to say no I have not. After reading @Nacin‘s blog post yesterday about it being months, since his last post I figured I might as well work on one myself.

After checking I found the last time I blogged was on September 19, 2010, and it was about “Accessibility Camp DC – October 9, 2010”, which was a great time in case anyone wanted to know. I had wanted to write a blog post a month or so ago, but it probably would have been about Accessibility Camp DC 2011 and it would have looked like I only post when I’m pushing one of my own events, which I actually need to do more of so we get more people attending. By attending the monthly event was so people can learn from each other as well as make new friends.

For those wondering how long it’s been, since I blogged last it has been 443 days or 1 year, 2 months, and 17 days.

To give you a better idea of how long it’s been, we have had our third Accessibility Camp DC, started our third year of monthly Accessibility DC meetings, and I even started working on my web based event registration prototype “Hold An Event”.

Information about Hold An Event

“Hold An Event” is going to be an accessible web based event registration application. The most important part of the application is that it will be accessible as possible when completed, since the event registration system we are currently using now is not accessible. Need to make sure this web application is usable by screen reader users, those, using voice recognition software, voice over (iPhone and iPad), and any other assistive technology.

I’m starting by building the mobile part first. I figured if you can register for an event or even create an event on your cell phone, then it should be even easier to do those tasks in a browser or on a tablet. I have spent most of the last two plus years gathering information about the different people that are likely to use the system and what types of functions they will need from the start and those that can wait until later.

More to come about “Hold An Event”, once the prototype is a bit further along, so I can get feedback on it from others.

Events Attended

During 2011 I attended the following events/conferences:

SXSW – Austin, TX
CSUN – San Diego, CA
Accessibility Camp Seattle – Seattle, WA
Accessibility Camp DC
An Event Apart DC
Edward Tufte – Washington, DC

That’s enough for now.

P.S. For those that don’t know the blog post title was a play on the Monty Python skit “Not Dead Yet”.

Posted in Accessibility, AccessibiltyCampDC, AEA, An Event Apart, Austin, TX, Development, JAWS, NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA), NVDA, Screen Reader, SXSW, Washington, DC, Web Applications, Window-Eyes | Leave a comment

Accessibility Camp DC – October 9, 2010

Posted on September 19, 2010 by John F Croston III

For those that were wondering when the next Accessibility Camp DC is, it will be on Saturday October 9 , 2010, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM in Washington, DC. This year we plan on getting more people out if we possibly can and there is already a nice sized group of out of towners coming as well.

For those that have never attended a BarCamp style event, which this is, the speakers and subjects for the event are decided the day of the event by everyone in attendance. Also in true BarCamp fashion the attendees can register for the event for FREE.

Some of the subjects we are hoping people can and will talk about are the following:

Section 508 Compliance or WCAG 2.0
Practical Ways to Make Your Website Accessible
Accessible PDF’s
Making Flash Accessible
What is WAI-ARIA – (Web Accessibility Initiative – Accessible Rich Internet Applications)
Accessible Video and Transcription
Panel Discussion on “Issues Effecting Individuals with Disabilities on the Web”
Captioning
Screen Reader Demos – JAWS and NVDA
Mobile software accessibility

Please pass this information on to others so we can have as many people as possible to learn and make needed connections about accessibility.

Hope to see you all there.

Posted in 508 Compliant, Accessibility, AccessibiltyCamp, AccessibiltyCampDC, Adpative Technology, BarCamp, Braille, Braille Reader, DC Adpative Technology, Design, Development, JAWS, Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Luther King Jr. Library, NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA), NVDA, Washington, DC, Web Applications, Web Standards | Leave a comment

snOMG – Washington, DC, 2010

Posted on March 8, 2010 by John F Croston III

Finally, getting my, great snow storms of Washington, DC, in February, 2010 blog pot out. This storm left even more snow than I was ready for, being from Buffalo, NY. We ended up with about a total of 25 inches of snow over at my house. We ended up backing the all time snow record for DC and a lot of the surrounding areas. The record was back to like 1889 or something like that.

Snow Photos

Here are seven photos I took of all the snow we got in Washington, DC, over the two giant snow storms in February. Starting with ones of my driveway and all the snow I had to shovel to get my car out to the driveway. There are even a few of different other parts of my neighborhood.

View of snow from my deck

Looking down my driveway towards the street

Large tree branch blocking the road

Other side of downed tree branch blocking the road

My side street

Tree in my front yard with lots of snow

Partially melted driveway

What Did You do with Your Snow Days

While the Federal government was closed for the first four days of last week I had to at least work from home or take time off to cover those days. So between shoveling and just getting out of the house for a short bit I was able to do work from home, because of all the software, e-mail (home and work), and IRC chat software.

Mostly spent me time doing different accessibility and usability testing of a new work web application. That’s all I can say about it, sorry. Ended up doing a review of a new micro website and mostly keyboard testing, along with other 508 testing using different adaptive technologies.

Posted in snOMG, Snow, Washington, DC | 1 Comment

Missed Two Weeks of Project 52 Blog Posts

Posted on March 4, 2010 by John F Croston III

In case you have been keeping track, yes, I did miss two of the last three weeks of Project 52 blog posts. Between working from home because of the back to back snow storms here in Washington, DC and the 11+ hours of shoveling a few weeks ago and just busy with a bunch of after work activities. Like planning the next Accessibility DC event and this falls Accessibility Camp DC event, I missed a few posts.

It was about 11:45 PM on Thursday night that I realized I had all of 15 minutes to get a quick blog post out, so made my preordained promise to write a blog post a week for a year. I figured it was not worth it to me to just throw together a quick few lines or paragraphs just to fill my quota.

As you might know this means, I now owe $20 to one of two charities, because I had decided donate money to charities like Martha’s Table or Kiva if I missed a week. I figured this would give me an incentive to make sure to write each week and help out those in need if and when I failed to write in a given week.

I have heard that Project 52 is doing a bit of a reboot starting on March 17, 2010, since a lot of others seem to have miss post as well.

Good luck to you if you decide to take up the challenge of attempting to blog every week for a year. I plan on being more focused once I get back from SXSW.

Posted in Accessibility, Adpative Technology, p52, Project 52, Web Applications, Web Standards, Work | Leave a comment

Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize Wish

Posted on February 14, 2010 by John F Croston III

I follow the great chef Jamie Oliver on twitter (@Jamie_Oliver) and knew he had been award the 2010 TED Prize. He mentioned on his twitter account about it and then linked to his speech after wards. I opened the link in my browser and figured I would back to them.

Last night I could not sleep because I had a few things on my mind. So I noticed that my good friend Justin Thorp(@thorpus) had written on his food blog (Justin Loves Food) an article about Jamie’s prize. It was entitled “Seriously, Watch Jamie Oliver’s TED Talk About Food Education!”. I read this post and watched Jamie’s TED prize video and the following is the comment I left on his blog.

My Response to Jamie’s TED Prize Talk

The following is my response to reading Justin’s blog post and then watching Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize wish. I felt so passionately about it I created my own blog post so more people will be able to see it an hopefully help with the problem.

I have been following Jamie Oliver for a few years on his different cooking show and have been a big fan of his style of cooking. I even watched Jamie’s series on how to improve the British school lunch system.

It took a bit of time to get the parents, students, and even the lunch ladies to start realizing that real food was better for the students. Once the students started eating better they paid more attention in classes and improved their grades and all they did was improving their eating habits at school and at home.

While at TEDxMidAtlantic this last fall (2009) there was a great talk by Tony Geraci, who is a “Fresh Food Advocate” for the city of Baltimore. You really need to watch Tony talk passionately about getting kids foods that are good for them. I strongly recommend that you watch his video from TEDxMidAtlantic – http://tedxmidatlantic.com/live/#TonyGeraci

So impressed with Jamie’s idea that I’m up at 3:25 AM after watching his TED wish that I’m writing this comment to make sure I get this out to you and your followers.

I know I have a way to go myself to improving my food habits and health. By starting to do more home cooking myself and bringing my lunch to work that will help me out in the long run. Doing so will improve my health without a lot of extra effort and if I add some exercise it will make it even easier.

P.S. I even listed to Tony’s whole talk while writing this comment. Please take the time to watch both of these powerful videos.

Start with Yourself

Please watch both Jamie’s TED talk and Tony’s TEDxMidAtlantic talk, along with read all the linked articles.

Finally, please start with yourself and spend more time cooking real food as Tony says. This will make you fell better and set a good example for others and even your children if you have any.

I plan on improving my eating habits and if you see me straying please remind me of that fact.

What do you think you can do to help improve this countries obesity problem?

Posted in Actions, Best Practices, Food, Jamie Oliver, Passion, TED Prize, TED Talks | 1 Comment