Nov 10Google Slides: big bullets to (nicely) tiny bulletsBy default, the bullet points in Google Slides are ginormous.Google Slides2 min readGoogle Slides2 min read
Sep 29Accessibility of Tabletop Games — Part 1Earlier this year Stonemaier Games published Vision-Friendly Card Sets for their award-winning game Wingspan. My company contributed design ideas that were included in the Vision-Friendly Card Sets. More recently, Stonemaier Games co-founder Jamey Stegmaier and I discussed the vision…Accessibility5 min readAccessibility5 min read
May 26Echobatix 1.0 for iOS (dev story 1.0.1)Echobatix, my company’s app, is available in the App Store as of today. Hurray! If you or someone you know is blind or low vision, please check out Echobatix 1.0. Here’s the App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/echobatix/id1552392882 More features to come! In this post I’ll briefly mention a few online resources…Accessibility2 min readAccessibility2 min read
Feb 19A word insertion hack to fix parts of speech assigned to short strings in SwiftApple’s NaturalLanguage library may not assign parts of speech accurately for strings of just two or three words. But that’s understandable, right? The two-word phrase “Order pizza” can be interpreted as two nouns rather than as “[Verb] [Noun].” But maybe you’re writing a chatbot feature for a pizza ordering app…Swift6 min readSwift6 min read
Feb 4Swift String extensions tokenize() and titleCase()If you’re working with String variables in Swift, and especially if you’re working with Natural Language Processing (NLP) using the Natural Language framework, you’ll end up splitting sentences into individual words. If you’ve been splitting your String variables by whitespace and punctuation, this post is for you! Maybe your chatbot…Naturallanguageprocessing4 min readNaturallanguageprocessing4 min read
Jan 30NLP Stop Words as a Swift Array (or set)If you’re doing work in Natural Language Processing (NLP), then you’ve probably come across the concept of stop words. Those are common words you’ll filter out before additional processing. For example, let’s say you have a sentence such as “Show me the dog.” Remove the stop words “me” and…NLP4 min readNLP4 min read
Oct 21, 2022Tech Equity beyond AccessibilitySo your product is accessible. Great! But can people with disabilities use your product as easily and quickly as people who aren’t disabled? Accessibility, taken literally, implies merely that a product is able to be accessed by all users. Access + able. In this short blog post I suggest a…Accessibility3 min readAccessibility3 min read
Jul 23, 2022Blind & Visually Impaired Job Applicants, Part 1: Would you hire a redhead?About 1% to 4% of people have vision impairments that aren’t corrected and/or can’t be corrected. Call it 2%. If fewer than 1 in 50 people in your organization have vision impairments, could your organization be overlooking qualified people? About 1% to 2% of people worldwide have red hair. Are…Blindness5 min readBlindness5 min read
May 6, 2022Maybe it’s not about claps & followersDo you make money on Medium? If so, that’s most excellent. I don’t make money here. No worries! Money is not why I post. One of my posts that received few claps or reads — and there are plenty of contenders! — was the post that lead to a fun…Enchiridion Of Epictetus1 min readEnchiridion Of Epictetus1 min read
Apr 29, 2022Snap Partner Summit: Accessibility, D.E.I., and DronesMy company’s touch screen accessibility project for Snap’s A.R. smart glasses made an appearance in the video from today’s Snap Partner Summit (Thursday 28 April 2022). Such an honor! Here’s the time-coded link to the bit about Echobatix: https://youtu.be/OlPey4WxY1Q?t=2395 Accessibility & ASL There’s also a great segment about Snap’s work in American Sign…Accessibility2 min readAccessibility2 min read
