After a few months of experimentation with different flours, I finally developed a chocolate chip cookie recipe that is better than the wheat-based cookies I baked for years. Made with rice, millet, oat, and sorghum flours, these gluten-free chocolate chip cookies will make you forget about plain old cookies made with wheat.
I first witnessed a visually impaired person trying to use a website in 2007. That person was my neighbor. She was trying to check her e-mail on AOL.com after the site had been redesigned. She had memorized the home page and with her limited sight she could navigate to her e-mail. After the redesign, she was lost.
We took the train to Philadelphia together and bought the JAWS screen reader and she learned how to use it. Meanwhile, I downloaded JAWS at work and started to train myself. I was amazed at how difficult it was to navigate through some websites using JAWS.
After witnessing the difficulty my neighbor had using a screen reader, I decided to make this website accessible to screen readers. I also created a guide for web accessibility to remind myself how to build accessible websites.
My goal at work is to make all of our websites accessible to people with disabilities. Creating accessible websites isn't complicated. The difficulty is making people understand that creating an accessible website doesn't take a tremendous amount of effort. Accessible websites give people with disabilities a vast amount of freedom.
During my 7th semester in college I removed the burner grates from the stove in the most horrible apartment I have ever lived. I placed them on some paper in the parking lot and snapped some photos with my old 35mm camera. I always took pride in developing beautiful photos myself.
(Right: Burner Grates, 1999)