Blog
Goodbye 2024
I don't usually do this, but I wanted to share my reflections on the last year and some of the things I've learned. In many ways, 2024 has been a good year for me, though it has had some challenges. I'll break it down into different life categories and share some thoughts on each. These are in no particular order of importance.
Published: 1 January 2025
The Western Front - part 2
Sunday 10th November is Remembrance Sunday in the UK. We spent that day visiting some of the sites around Ypres. We had a long list of places to visit but we didn't have time to get to all of them. Hopefully, one day, we'll return to the ones we missed.
Published: 14 December 2024
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The Western Front - part 1
A year or so back, I asked Neil if there was anywhere he fancied for our first motorhome trip abroad. He was quick to answer. The Western Front and the 1st world war battle sites. So we booked it, packed it, etc.
When I started writing this, I realised it was going to be a very long post, so I decided to break it up into sections. This first post will be about Poperinge and the three places we visited there. These visits took place on Saturday 9th November 2024.
Published: 30 November 2024
Read full post - The Western Front - Part 1
Outlook Accessibility
Outlook is mostly used for emails, so what could we possibly get wrong here? To be fair, most simple text emails should be okay, but there are plenty of times that emails are anything but simple. Then we can bring in the Outlook Calendar. This is another very handy tool, that enables us to invite people to meetings and events. How can we do that in an accessible way?
Published: 18 August 2024
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PDF Accessibility
If there's one thing that will get Accessibility Specialists arguing amongst themselves, it is PDFs. There seems to be a PDF accessibility spectrum. At one end are those who condemn all PDFs as completely inaccessible, the spawn of the devil, never to be used again. At the other end are a group of accessibility people, who bombard my LinkedIn messaging system with offers to make every PDF in my organisation 100% accessible. They offer compliance with every law known to man and don't understand why I don't bite their hands off. I'm somewhere in the middle. We live in a world that includes PDFs so it makes sense to ensure that they are accessible to as many people as possible.
In this post, I want to share some tips to make your PDF as accessible as possible. To do this properly, you need Adobe Acrobat Pro(the paid for version). If you haven't got this, I would not really recommend creating PDFs but if you absolutely have to, at least follow the first two tips and that will be better than nothing.
Published: 10 August 2024
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PowerPoint Accessibility
PowerPoint is a fantastic application for displaying slides to support a presentation, whether face-to-face or online. However, it often gets used for purposes that it isn't intended for, such as creating reports and dashboards. So before I even begin, the first thing I would advise you to do, is question whether PowerPoint is the right tool for the job.
Making PowerPoint slides accessible can involve a lot of work and really knowing how to use PowerPoint well. I'm going to assume that the principles we've already looked at in Word and Excel still apply to PowerPoint. So give your images alt text, give your slides a meaningful name, and if you display data, provide the raw data as well as a graph.
Published: 4 August 2024
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Excel Accessibility
I tend to get two assumptions about Excel. The first is that it is automatically accessible because all you do is put data in cells, so what's to go wrong? The second is that Excel is not at all accessible and that we should either avoid it or not even worry about accessibility.
Neither is true. Excel, like most other applications, can be used to create accessible content but you have to know what you're doing. In this day and age, I really think we should all know how to do this, which is why I write these blogs and run my website.
Published: 21 July 2024
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Word Accessibility
Some of my earliest experiences of using a computer were for word processing. I had a ZX Spectrum +3 with a word processing programme that took ages to load. It allowed me to produce my university assignments in print, rather than having to handwrite them. In 1989, I don't think I knew anything about accessibility - physical or digital - but a lot has changed since then.
Now, in 2024, most of us have some kind of digital device and disabled people, including assistive software users, should be able to access Word documents just as easily as everyone else. This post will explain three things that you can do to make your Word document more accessible.
I'll try to explain what to do, why it matters and how to do it. I will try to give instructions for assistive software users too, as I think they get completely forgotten when teaching accessibility.
Published: 14 July 2024
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Document Series
It's a long time since I wrote blog posts on the subject of document accessibility, which is something that we should all know something about. In the workplace, I have noticed a significant shift in awareness around document accessibility but there is still a long way to go. Many people now know they should be making their documents accessible but just lack the skills and confidence to do it well.
So I thought now is the time to write a series of blog posts on different types of documents and give you three things that we can all do to make them more accessible.
Published: 7 July 2024
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Northern Ireland
As I prepare this blog post, it's a week before we leave for Northern Ireland. As usual, a lot of planning has gone into this post, which you can see on my Wanderlog Plan 
. I've also plotted out the Northern Ireland part of the trip on this map.
Published: 22 June 2024
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Liggy in the Workplace
Liggy is my assistance dog, provided by the charity, Canine Partners . When I first brought her home, I wrote a blog post called Assistance Dog Etiquette , to help explain to other people in my world, how they should behave around her. That post was great in the beginning but Liggy is older now and things change, so I thought I should update the information.
What I am going to write here applies mostly to when Liggy comes into a workplace with me, but it does transfer to other environments too, such as shops and restaurants.
Published: 19 February 2024
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