Mark Greenfield

Policy Arm of World’s Largest Computing Association Urges Baseline for Accessibility-Driven Technology Development The Association for Computing Machinery’s global Technology Policy Council has released "TechBrief: Advancing Accessibility in the Digital World.” It is the latest in a series of TechBriefs —short tec...

Happy to have contributed to this ACM tech brief #a11y www.acm.org/media-center...

Help Us Report on How the Department of Education Is Handling Civil Rights Cases Have you recently filed a civil rights complaint or do you have a pending case? We need your help to get a full picture of how the dismantling of the Office for Civil Rights is affecting students,…

The Trump administration laid off nearly half of the Department of Education division that handles civil rights investigations and halted work on thousands of pending discrimination cases.

If you were affected, we want to hear from you. Get in touch:

FTC Catches up to #accessiBe From the FTC on Friday: The Federal Trade Commission will require software provider accessiBe to pay $1 million to settle allegations that it misrepresented the ability of its AI-powered web accessibi...

FTC decision against #accessiBe came down Tuesday and a somewhat snarky FTC blog post yesterday, so I link to both with excerpts:
adrianroselli.com/2025/01/ftc-... (anchor link)

Also included an example of where _maybe_ accessiBe might have already been misbehaving?

#overlay #a11y #accessibility

Mark your calendars! Several 18F alumni are speaking at this free virtual event on Tuesday, April 15.

This is especially true at public universities where there is a substantial difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition

Humming along in an old church, the Internet Archive is more relevant than ever The Trump administration's erasure of federal data has put the Internet Archive in the spotlight. The organization, with its small but mighty team, is working to help save the world's digital history.

The Trump administration's erasure of federal data has put the Internet Archive in the spotlight. The organization, with its small but mighty team, is working to help save the world's digital history.

“Good people are getting brainwashed”: These Florida snowbirds are fleeing over Trump’s tariffs - Toronto Life Derek Rauchfleisz and his wife, Jenny, were living a tropical dream in Fort Myers—until America began crumbling around them

Lots of interesting anecdotes from a right leaning wealthy Canadian retiree: “We have plenty of American friends here on both sides of the fence, but the Republican ones are behaving like mindless zombies.” torontolife.com/real-estate/...

Covering DOGE + downsizing of the federal government, particularly with an eagle eye on IT systems and cybersecurity, has taken me across agencies and parts of the country I previously knew little about.

Turns out, there's SO much that can break.

Keep reaching out on Signal at JennaMcLaughlin.54.

Sharing with my numerous friends and colleagues from the federal government now looking for work.

highly recommend getting the wayback machine extension as well. helps preserve the web as you browse! addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo...

David Bowie's Heroes has always been one of my favorite songs and there has plenty of great live versions including Bowie at Live Aid and Peter Gabriel at the Berlin Wall. But this version is my favorite. Powerful, angry, defiant, patriotic, and inspiring.

A photo of the late great advertising creative director Sal Devito, with one of his famous sayings: "Make the logo smaller and the idea bigger." The saying is signed "Sal" in script. Sal's facial expression is suspicious, anticipating that you haven't worked hard enough. I saw that face a lot when I worked for him during the early 1990s.

Boom.

#creativity #advertising #ArtDirectors #SalDevito #ideas #wisdom #SVA #teachers #mentors More info in ALT text.

Why a Department of Education closure is concern for students with disabilities NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Kristy Hedler, mother of a son with Down syndrome, about what eliminating the Department of Education would mean for kids who receive special education services.

“Why a Department of Education closure is concern for students with disabilities”
www.npr.org/2025/03/07/n...

Interview with the mother of a son with Down syndrome.

This was very disappointing. I’ve been a fan of Deque but now I’m not so sure, especially after their response.

Be Wary of Accessibility Guarantees from Anyone TL;DR: anyone promising you that a total solution to digital accessibility is coming, and they are the ones bringing it, may be lying. Background In 2016 I wrote Be Wary of Accessibility Guarantees fr...

“Be Wary of Accessibility Guarantees from Anyone”
adrianroselli.com/2025/03/be-w...

I updated it a couple days ago with a link to @yatil.net’s post on same and two LinkedIn discussions (one from @karlgroves.bsky.social). If you have links to others, let me know.

#a11y #accessibility

Oh, I also see CSUNATC is letting an #overlay vendor run a its Friday “Fireside Chat: The Future of AI and Accessibility.”

I may be judging the people from D2L, Yahoo, ETS, and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP who have chosen to share a stage with #AudioEye.

Mike, happy to share this. The importance of identifying roles and responsibilities is often overlooked.

Very happy to see this. I've been using the RACI matrix in my consulting work for the past 10 years and it works well in higher education where roles, responsibilities and decision making authority is often vague.

Pay attention #highered

18F Guides A central resource for all 18F guides and methods

Our 18F Guides are back up! Tell your friends. 18f.org/guides/

Be Wary of Accessibility Guarantees from Anyone TL;DR: anyone promising you that a total solution to digital accessibility is coming, and they are the ones bringing it, may be lying. Background In 2016 I wrote Be Wary of Accessibility Guarantees fr...

“Be Wary of Accessibility Guarantees from Anyone”
adrianroselli.com/2025/03/be-w...

Sort of an updated version of my 2016 post.

#accessibility #a11y

Skilled technologists are being forced out of government 18F and USDS are gutted by DOGE

One way you can tell that DOGE is not doing what they claim they are, modernizing tech or finding waste, is bc Trump and DOGE have ousted 3 entities who ALREADY WERE DOING THAT. @donmoyn.bsky.social describes two here, USDS and 18F.

The third are the IGs.

donmoynihan.substack.com/p/skilled-te...

18F was doing exactly the type of work that DOGE claims to want – yet we were eliminated shortly after midnight. Read our letter to the American people:
18f.org

If you worked for 18F and got fired, Group together to start a consulting company.

It’s just a matter of time before DOGE needs you to fix the mess they inevitably create.

They will have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms.

I’m happy to invest and/or help

I got laid off today, with the rest of 18F.

18F was an elite federal software shop. We made gov't websites work better, more efficiently for the American people. We saved taxpayers from getting screwed over by contractors. And were fired for it.

We made this website to tell our story:
18f.org

Please read this letter to the American people from the people at 18F and support their important work.

18f.org

“We made this website to tell our story.”

The Education Department is out this morning with an FAQ document, which is quite the read, on school compliance with its anti-DEI Dear Colleague letter.

Read it here: www.ed.gov/media/docume...

“We’ve Been Essentially Muzzled”: Department of Education Halts Thousands of Civil Rights Investigations Under Trump Since Inauguration Day, the Office for Civil Rights has only opened about 20 investigations focused on Trump’s priorities, placing more than 10,000 student complaints related to disability access and ...

“Several employees told ProPublica that they have been told not to communicate with the students, families and schools involved in cases launched in previous administrations and to cancel scheduled meetings and mediations. ‘We’ve been essentially muzzled.’” www.propublica.org/article/depa...

Why Los Angeles Burned Flammable homes, urban sprawl, high temperatures: The fires show we’re unprepared for life on a hotter planet

Another gem from @jeffgoodell.bsky.social: "We are like dinosaurs wandering around after the meteor hit, thinking that the ash that is blocking out the sun is going to dissipate at any moment and everything will go back to normal."
www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...