I’ve spent a good portion of this week writing about WCAG 3.0, the third version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. As the name states, WCAG is a set of guidelines – not rules – about how to implement digital accessibility: making websites, apps and other digital products accessible to people with disabilities. Nevertheless, it …
24 November is always a sombre day for me, being the birthday of my mother, who died in August 1981 at 61 years old, when I was 20. Probably more than my own birthday or Christmas or New Year’s Day, it’s on this day I think about where my life has gone and is going, …
Well, this was different! It’s an account by David Vee Rodden of the time he spent in Pakistan when his wife Drew “scored the job as Personal Secretary to the Ambassador of Belgium to Pakistan and Afghanistan” in 2003. This meant moving to Islamabad and becoming, for the first year at least, a house husband …
A Pakistani House Husband: the beauty & the chaos, by David Vee Rodden Read More »
Ableism Explained A common definition of ableism is that it is discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities. That’s undoubtedly true, but ableism can also be described as discrimination in favor of non-disabled people. The distinction lies in how ableism — sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly — puts forward the myth of the superiority of non-disabled …
I suspect this post will be of little interest to anyone, but I need to write it to clear my mind, at the very least. I’m back at work today after three weeks’ leave, the first break I’ve had since June 2021. I hadn’t realised it had been that long since I’d had any time …
I found this to be a bit of a mixed bag. I certainly couldn’t have picked a more different book to follow my recent reading. On the plus side, Waiting for Robert Capa is based on a set of real events that I found truly amazing. It had never occurred to me that the famous …
Cormac McCarthy doesn’t have anything to prove. With 10 novels under his belt since 1965, one winning the Pulitzer Prize, another turned into a Best Picture Oscar winner, and a raft of other literary awards as well as enormous sales around the world, he already stands as one of America’s greatest living writers. Yet here …
It’s so good to be back in the world of Alan Garner. It’s not like other worlds. Geographically, it’s in Cheshire, north west England, often around Alderley Edge, where Garner grew up: it’s English but it’s also Welsh and Scottish. Chronologically, it’s the aggregated history of ancient Celts, forgotten Druids, assimilated Romans, seafaring Irishmen, conquering …
You might know Lo Carmen as Loene Carmen, the name she used until 2012. If you’re like me, you’ll know her primarily as an actress. Plucked from Kings Cross pizza bar obscurity to star as Freya in The Year My Voice Broke (1987). Her astounding, compelling performance as Sallie-Anne Huckstepp in Blue Murder (1995). And …
It’s one thing to have a clever idea, such as telling the story of William Shakespeare’s life and work through the eyes and voice of one of his fellow actors, a colleague who outlived the Bard and was among those responsible for ensuring that his plays survived in written form. And it’s another thing to …