A belated happy new year to all of you! I’ve been battling a bacterial infection while I’m on holidays, which hasn’t been fun.
My friends Donna, Andrew and Matt recently tagged me for the ‘8 things you don’t know about me’ meme. The rules are pretty straight forward:
Link to your tagger and post these rules
List EIGHT random facts about yourself
Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names
Let them know they’ve been tagged
So here’s eight random facts about me:
I’m a covert rubberstamper. I have a fairly large range of rubberstamps, mostly arty styled stamps, and a nice range of interesting papers. I love the different textures of paper and love to mix and match stamps to papers. You may end up getting a hand made creation from me (but only if I know your birthday!).
I was born in Singapore and spent 8 years growing up there. My family and I migrated to Perth, Australia in the 1980s – a period when people were scared of the “Asianisation” of Australia. It was an interesting experience growing up in Australia. For a long time, I tried to deny my Asian roots after being told many times “to go back to where I came from”. I’m now totally comfortable with all sides of my heritage and am a strong believer in living in a negative-discrimination-free society.
I love quirky hand crafted pieces of art.
I play the djembe. I don’t play it particularly well, but I love it.
I used to be a pretty severe stutterer, as were my dad and my uncles. I used to get really frustrated at not being able to verbally express myself clearly. I knew what I wanted to say but could not voice what was in my head. It was even more frustrating seeing other people get frustrated at me. I managed to overcome this issue by sheer force of will (both my parents and I were unaware that there were various treatment plans available to help overcome stuttering). Although I don’t stutter nowadays, there are times when I get close to it but the problem manifests in being unable to pronounce certain words in certain conditions.
I saw snow for the first time in 2003. Prior to that, I didn’t even realise that we had snow in Australia! Ever since 2003 we’ve been hitting the ski slopes every season.
I actually get grumpy at times. Just ask my hubby.
I love retro tin robots. I like robots in general and have always had a fascination with them. At one stage, I thought I was going to grow up to be a roboticist.
I tag the following folks as I’m interested in finding out more about them!
Lisa Herrod – I know she’s already been tagged by Donna, but she’s being tagged again :)
Kenji Walter – I’ve only met Kenji recently, at the Canberra Web Blast
Minnie – she’s a wonderful artist, writer and photographer.
Gary Barber – I first met Gary at one of the earlier Web Directions conference. I was so excited at meeting a fellow Perth person all the way on the other side of Australia.
Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas! I’m currently in Perth and have spent a great day full of Christmas celebrations with friends and family. I’m also quite full with champagne!
I was hoping to get some photos of a pretty cool Christmas lights display in Perth this year but when we got there, the displays were turned off due to some complaints from within the neighbourhood (apparently the road was so congested that residents couldn’t get into their houses). So I leave you with the YouTube video of the place we saw (except we sadly didn’t get to see the full display shown in the video).
There are 26,500 light bulbs, 128 lighting channels, 5 kilometres of electrical cable, 220 man hours to set up and $3.40/night in power to run this display. Every light is synched to music which is heard by motorists on a FM92.5 as they drive past this home in Bishop Riley Way, Churchlands Western Australia. The home owners aimed to raise $10k for Princess Margaret Hospital but ended up raising $11,839.
For those of you in Canberra, the Canberra Web-blast is happening tomorrow night. It’s free to come along with free drinks and free food…plus lots of door prizes!
So what is Web-blast? It’s a huge end-of-year party for the web community – bringing together web designers, web project managers, interface designers, information architects and other web professionals. Join a range of Canberra’s web communities and celebrate the end of year in style.
Meet Glenda Watson Hyatt – she is an author, blogger, podcaster and she runs her own accessibility business called Soaring Eagle Communications in Canada. By the way, she has cerebral palsy.
Glenda shares her life story in her book I’ll Do It Myself to show others that cerebral palsy is not a death sentence, but rather a life sentence. Having previously visited Australia where she chatted with Jacqui Dalling at her blog Terrible Palsy, Glenda is back in the land down under. As part of her virtual book tour, she answers my questions about living with cerebral palsy and web accessibility.
Starting at the beginning…You mentioned being integrated into a regular classroom when going through school, plus going on to earn the highest award in Girl Guides, the Outstanding Junior Student Award and a gold medal in horseback riding! What was it like going through “mainstream” school with cerebral palsy?
To be honest, I preferred regular class to special ed class. For the most, I felt part of the group, albeit the fairly quiet part. I think I was challenged more and more was expected from me. I’ve probably accomplished much by being mainstreamed than I would have by staying in special education.
You recently coined a neat phrase – “Disability 2.0 – Nothing about us without us”. Are you able to expand on what you mean by this?
So many decisions, policies and such are made that affect people with disabilities, yet we are not part of the process. Some of these decisions and policies are absolutely ridiculous, yet we need to abide by them to get the services we truly need. By Disability 2.0, I mean a greater emphasis on self-determination – on people with disabilities being actively and equally involved in the decision-making process, and being present when information regarding them is shared and discussed.
It’s amazing reading about using your left thumb to type. Do you use a standard keyboard to type and navigate around websites? Are there any other technologies that you may use?
Yes, I plunk away at on a standard keyboard with only my left thumb; my four fingers glide along the top of the keyboard to steady my unsteady hand. However, it is becoming more difficult to find keyboards without an extra row of keys along the top.
In place of a mouse, I use a Traxsys (formerly Penny + Giles) joystick. Definitely not an inexpensive alternative at approximately $700 Canadian. OUCH! But I have much better control with the joystick than with the mouse. With the mouse, one involuntary or jerky hand movement and the mouse pointer goes flying across the screen. How frustrating!
I also use EZ Keys software for word prediction and abbreviation expansion. As I begin typing, the six most frequently used words starting with those letters appear in a small blue box on the screen. Different words appear as I continue typing. When the word I want appears, I simply hit the corresponding number and the computer completes the word. It does save me quite a few keystrokes! Although, even with this handy software, I still only type approximately ten or twelve words a minute, give or take.
Communication has always been a key message in your blog. With web 2.0 bringing new and fascinating ways of interacting with people around the globe, what are some of the key opportunities and challenges that you have faced with web 2.0 technologies?
These technologies have expanded the ways I can interact with people. The new opportunities to connect with people are truly amazing! I am eagerly waiting time to explore Second Life and to see what it is all about.
However, I am reluctant to fully embrace some of these technologies because they aren’t accessible to people with some types of disabilities and, if my business is about web accessibility, I feel I need to walk the talk as much as possible.
It has been interesting reading about your accessibility work for the Canadian Government and encouraging to see the growing awareness of accessibility and the W3C WCAG 1.0 in both the government and private sectors. To some extent, there seems to be a perception that web accessibility is mainly for people with visual disabilities. Developing websites for people with motor related disabilities is not often covered to the same depth as say, visual disabilities. Have you got any tips for our readers on some things to consider when developing websites for people with motor disabilities?
I agree that there is a misperception that web accessibility is mainly for people with sight impairments, and the barrier facing people with other disabilities are discounted. For me with limited hand function, I find those pop-out menus difficult to navigate – they either disappear before I can click or I end up clicking the wrong link and going somewhere I didn’t want to go. It would help if those menus were keyboard navigable so that I could tab through the links if necessary. Equally frustrating are tiny clickable areas; redundant text links are helpful. Also, timed tasks are some times difficult for me to complete before the session times out. A way to increase time would be appreciated.
Today is World Environment Day. For the Canberrans, Mix 106.3 and Tim the Yowie Man are working together to encourage all Canberrans to reduce their water usage for 24 hours.
“Target 75″ is a plan to reduce Canberra’s water use from the average 118 megalitres to 75 megalitres for the day.
We should be aiming to reduce our daily water usage, rather than aiming for just one day, but it is raising the awareness of the water situation here.
It was the RSPCA Million Paws Walk on Sunday. The Million Paws Walk is an annual event held around Australia. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, with lots of very cute doggies running around in excitement. I soaked up enough doggy cuteness to last until I can get back to Perth to see Zoe!
The above photo is of Camry the beagle. He is a member of Dog Rock! – the dog orchestra that my acapella group accompanied. Isn’t he cute? What makes him even cuter in real life is that he’s one of the best behaved dogs I’ve ever seen.
Dumping computers willy-nilly without any thought on the impact on the environment is one issue that has been bothering me for a few years. So I was really excited when I discovered that DELL Computers and ANUgreen are running a computer recycling event on Saturday 26th May 2007.
Details are:
The ACT community is being invited to drop off their old computers for recycling at a carpark on the ANU – FREE of CHARGE!
What: DELL Recycling event
When: Saturday May 26th 2007, 9.00am until 3.00pm
Where: Lennox Crossing, carpark opposite University House
They are also looking for volunteers. If you want to help out, or just want further information, contact Millie Rooney (millie.rooney@anu.edu.au) or John Sullivan (john.sullivan@anu.edu.au). I suggest getting in contact with them to confirm the details of the event.
Yes folks. It’s coming up to that time of the year – Free Comic Book Day. Happening at a participating comic book store near you, on Saturday 5th May 2007.
