mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Open Standards and Practices Lead at CivicActions | Drupal #Accessibility | Digital Services Coalition Board | @w3c@mastodon.social Invited Expert #SustainableWeb #ARRM | http://ox.ca | #SolarPunk #CliFi #Quaker #Feminist #Canadian #WebAlmanac #IAAPCPWA | he/him
Avatar - CC-SA by Tiana Lea
Installing #solar 1 house at a time leaves a lot of value on the table. What if neighbours planned together? How about #Ottawa & specifically #Centretown
I am thrilled to announce that I’ve contributed a chapter to the new book, Digital Accessibility Ethics: Disability Inclusion in All Things Tech. Published earlier today!
This book explores the intersection of disability rights & the evolving tech landscape, and I’m honored to be included alongside so many brilliant voices in the field. If you are passionate about building a more inclusive digital world, this is a must-read!
Privacy is a big deal for cars, especially electric cars. Many are worried about Chinese cars. What is worth remembering is that Western car manufacturers all fail on respecting user privacy https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/
What if every project on GitHub had a ACCESSIBILITY.md
Would this commitment at the root of a project change anything?
This is a rough draft of what it could look like:
https://mgifford.github.io/ACCESSIBILITY.md
I just released pdf-crawler, a tool to audit PDF accessibility at scale!
This is a direct "remix" of the brilliant work by the Luxembourg government's #accessibility team & their #simplA11yPDFCrawler - it’s a testament to the power of #OpenSource: a tool built for one #gov can be adapted to help everyone.
I relied heavily on #AI to refactoring the original tech into this GitHub-based scanner. It’s a great example of using AI to amplify good.
Thank you @AccessibilityLU@mas.to for sharing your work!
Digital public goods are enabling open collaboration at scale. Explore what shaped the #DPG ecosystem in 2025 in the new State of the DPG Ecosystem Report: https://www.digitalpublicgoods.net/2025-DPG-Ecosystem-Report
What European governments still are using legacy social media? https://mgifford.github.io/eu-plus-government-scans/social-media.html
So many good shows on #CanadaLandShow — I enjoy getting insight on what is happening to Canadians. It's a refreshing view on the news. Thanks @jessebrown@newsie.social
Here are some of their popular shows.
I built a small prototype exploring how we might publish structured accessibility information about physical buildings:
https://mgifford.github.io/accessible-buildings/
Web #accessibility has standards as does the built environment.
There isn't a good model though to share the work to communicate what has been done via the web.
Serious critique welcome.
• What key #a11y attributes are missing?
• Are there existing standards to align with?
• What might stop adoption?
• What are the biggest risks in this approach?
This has come up before. Screen readers do not have a limit. Long-desc is no longer supported. However for much longer alt text, it probably makes more sense to put in an aria-described by pointing to a paragraph or page describing the content.
I don't think that a 1500 character limit is unreasonable. Most folks barely do 20.
But then maybe maybe NASA won't like it https://www.npr.org/2022/07/22/1112878868/webb-telescope-alt-text-visually-impaired
@allthingsopen@mastodon.social is there a podcast or just a YouTube stream?
