In 1941, Lyndon Baines Johnson lost his Senate race in District. Spurned, he turned away from much of what his core beliefs were and went a different direction. Once he finally moved more conservative to win in Texas, he turns against FDR, the New Deal, and along the way makes his way into more powerful elected positions.
He becomes the youngest Majority Leader in the country, but did not a lot of purpose for it. Until he had a heart attack six months later.
Recovering at his ranch, he asked himself, “What if I died now, what would I be remembered for?”
That’s when LBJ “found” himself. He remembered what he stood for and believed. He supported reconstruction, the New Deal, and a far more expansive role of government for the good of civil rights.
All this is to say: what if we didn’t always have to have a near-death experience to think about that big question?
If you died right now, what would you be remembered for? And by whom?
Personally, I struggle with this.
I have long held the dour view that my life is likely to be a short one. Too many brain tumors killed off the women in my family tree and too many prostate cancers and heart disease on the men’s side. 40 is quite an accomplishment for many of the leaves in the Blankenbaker-Malloy-Harter-Knapp- branches.
I struggle recognizing that my work is so ephemeral. A website only lasts so long as someone pays a $13 a year domain name renewal bill.
I struggle recognizing the onslaught of emails and requests every day reduce me to feeling like a mere pixel pusher. “That button should say X”. “Actually, you don’t want it to say that because of Y.” “I don’t care, make it X.” All. Day. Long.
I struggle feeling like any of the work I do amounts to much. Best case some people make a new sale or get a new “like”. What a worthless metric to measure anything against.
I prod myself into doing things that are basically ridiculous — like triathlons, races, and heck I did a 100 mile century ride on a whim two Saturdays ago. All for the intent of feeling a small bit of accomplishment at doing things most people just won’t do.
LBJ lived his life always wanting and seeking power. He got it, then lost it, and never really got over that. I’ve always been seeking some sort of long-lasting thing that would provide … something.
I’ve never cared much about money, clearly. My tax filings can long attest to that. It’s probably made me a worse business owner as a result.
I’ve never cared much about power. I don’t get a thrill out of managing people or telling others what to do.
I’ve always liked creating things. Putting things into the world. Perhaps it would be nice to do something that would last a little longer than an ephemeral web page.
Organizing things is also equally nice. I’ve long felt a sense of accomplishment just putting things into logical order, whether physical objects in space or a story line in writing.
Perhaps most people struggle with this same thing. And you?
What are we going to be remembered for if we died today?
A year or two ago I started reading some of Ethan Marcotte’s calls for better web accessibility. Taking steps to make websites behave more predictably, play nice with screen readers, and follow some code standards all seemed like easy enough things to do. I thought they’d be especially easy to do if we thought about it before developing a new website. Like wiring a house before putting up the drywall.
As one example, I knew that screen readers just read down the screen. Unlike humans with visual acuity who quickly learn to ignore the right column of ads or the navigation menu on each page, screen readers can’t discern what’s junk and what’s not. So they repeat everything on every page. Putting in a quick “skiplink” code allows the screen reader to skip narrating the navigation menu of a site every time a page loads.
Easy peasy! Throw in some ALT tags for images to describe what they are and we’re all set.
Problem is, none of this works like I expected.
On Friday I went to a client’s home to help them setup anything I could think of to supplement their vision. After a sudden surgery for macular degeneration, the temporary side effect left them unable to see well.
They had three devices: A Windows 7 desktop PC, an iPhone 8 with a home button, and a Windows 10 HP laptop.
iPhone Accessibility with VoiceOver and Zoom
We started with the iPhone first. I went into the accessibility settings thinking if we just made the text larger it’d be easier to read.
For them, the text size wasn’t of issue. The issue with their vision is a large dark area that blocks light. Imagine trying to read a piece of paper late at night. By shining a flashlight at an angle on a screen, they could make out the words and elements on the screen. But it wasn’t sustainable. Using the device with one hand and holding a flashlight with another was difficult for an octogenarian.
For kicks, we tried using the phone with Zoom on. The phone was more difficult to use because it required three fingers to move around the screen. Instead of just enlarging items on the screen, it turned the device into the world’s lousiest magnifying glass. By using three fingers to scroll through a “window” in all directions, and using three-finger taps to toggle it on and off, you couldn’t see the small screen to read with any ease because your fingers are constantly in the way.
You should try it yourself. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Zoom and toggle it on.
Next I tried VoiceOver. VoiceOver reads what’s on the screen so you can listen to it instead. For all the attention Apple spends promoting their accessibility work, I had high hopes and expectations for this.
Turning VoiceOver on immediately displays a warning that enabling it will change the paradigm of how you use your device. It’s not kidding. It’s like using an entirely different operating system for the first time.
VoiceOver uses the pre-Siri robotic voice you remember from the early 2000’s on the Mac. Harsh, clipped, and fast. iOS 14 has new options for download that might sound better, but on an old iPhone 8 with limited storage, it was a big ask.
Enabling VoiceOver means each tap selects an object, like a link or app icon. VoiceOver then reads what you tapped on and if you don’t quickly do something else it keeps reading “Double tap to activate. Or use Force Touch for more options.” This phrase became insufferable. Imagine after clicking and dragging something with your mouse your computer always said “Let go of the mouse to drop. Or press CMD for more options.” You’d probably unplug your speakers.
Couple this with mobility and dexterity problems
If you’ve ever watched an older or beginner use a touch screen before, you’ve probably noticed they don’t hover their finger over the glass. If you pick up your phone right now and launch Messages, notice how closely you probably keep your thumb or index finger over the keyboard and glass. You’re likely within centimeters of the surface ready to tap and type. Older people don’t do that because they either don’t think to, are afraid to touch it, or have shaky hands that trigger superfluous actions.
When my client tries to open an app, they’re used to holding the phone in their left hand and then striking with their index finger from 4-5 inches away. I’ve noticed this in a lot of beginner screen users. It’s an almost violent interaction method as if the glass is made of lava. This large gap between finger and screen is like dropping a missile from low earth orbit. The chances for missing are high, and the time it takes to reach the surface is longer.
With VoiceOver enabled, the interaction to open Messages went like this. Items in brackets are the robotic device voice. Keep in mind the first icon the home screen is FaceTime:
Push home button to enable screen.
[FaceTime. Double-tap to activate. Or use Force Touch for more options.]
“I don’t want FaceTime.”
“Select Messages with one tap,” I say.
Taps Messages after looking for it.
[Messages. Double-tap to activate. Or use Force Touch for more options.]
Taps Messages again
[Messages. Double-tap to activate. Or use Force Touch for more options.]
“You need to double-tap that now to activate,” I say.
Taps once and then lifts finger for a second tap. [Messages. Double-tap to activate. Or use Force Touch for more options.]
Second tap lands. [Messages. Double-tap to activate. Or use Force Touch for more options.]
This went on for a frustrating amount of time. The time between his first tap and second was long enough the device didn’t register it as anything but two single taps, not a single double-tap.
Adjusting the tap time, again in Settings, helped a little. But their poor vision and unsteady hand meant high errors in where taps landed. A double-tap aimed at Messages meant one tap for Messages and another, mistaken second, tap for Phone.
Even when I tried using the iPhone with VoiceOver enabled it proved frustrating and annoying. Going into Messages meant the reader kept saying things that really weren’t helpful most of the time. It sounded like this:
Tap Messages [Messages. [Double-tap to act—]
Double-tap Messages [Messages.]
[Edit]
[Messages]
[New Message]
[Message from: John Doe…]
You’ve probably never noticed, but if you go into Messages you see the “Edit” button in the top left. The heading “Messages” in the middle, and the “New Message” icon in the top right.
VoiceOver reads these each time you go into the app because they’re the order they appear. It’s worth noting, too, that if you have unread messages, VoiceOver will say [Messages. 1 new unread message.] when you tap on the icon from the home screen. And again when you’re in the app before it starts reading.
This behavior was the same on their phone, which contained 1,257 unread items. They, like me, never deletes their voicemails because I just wait for the text message transcription to pop in.
The transcriptions were a nightmare. VoiceOver not only tries to read the transcription, but it does so while playing the voicemail. A significant bug that rendered it completely useless. Listening to a robotic voice read a broken transcript where every third or fourth word is wrong and the actual audio of the voicemail at the same time made my client shake their head in frustration. “I can’t use this.”
“No, this isn’t useful or helpful at all.”
We turned it off. Literally all they wanted their phone to do was read voicemails and text messages. Text messages, which, by the way, were overflowing with political campaign spam.
Windows 7 and 10 Narrator equally frustrating
On their desktop PC running Windows 7, my client wanted to get similar help with email. Specifically in AOL, which they’ve used since the Clinton administration.
This proved equally frustrating. But was surprisingly better in some ways. Narrator performed the same on Windows 7 as it did Windows 10. It doesn’t seem like there were any improvements there. But it at least sounded more human out-of-the-box.
And like VoiceOver on iOS, Narrator read down the list of what it saw on the screen. But it wouldn’t read email. It can read the “chrome” around the window. Things like the File menu, Edit, etc. But not the actual text of the email.
For that, we tried a service that promised to speak email, but it was not designed for anyone who gets actual emails.
The first email was junk from a car dealer. My client, like me, does not own a car and does not want a car. But there we were, staring at an ad for a new Audi while they beamed a desk lamp on to the screen to try and read it.
As difficult as tapping was on their phone, clicking with a mouse was nearly impossible. They just didn’t know it. I sat and watched as they clicked helplessly on what was expected to be a close “X” in the top right. Instead, clicks were registered on all manner of banner ads, spam, links, and useless menu items.
Apple nerds have long complained about Apple shoving menu items into “drawers”, or otherwise requiring you to click a hamburger menu icon to show them. Microsoft goes the other direction and shoves every icon imaginable into ribbons and menus. I now believe Microsoft’s method puts too many accidental clicks in reach. For users with dexterity or visual impairment, all those icons and menus are landmines ready to blow.
Within seconds my client had opened several tabs and windows. They were on the way to unsubscribing, buying a new Audi, sending a new message, and organizing Contacts when they really just wanted to Exit the window. With each frustrating click, more random stuff just bounced around the screen.
On the laptop, it took me ten minutes to figure out why a checkbox was enabled that meant the speakers were listening to the microphone. This should never happen because all it did was result in a feedback loop of noise. There’s no reason for that option to exist, but it was on, and made the HP laptop’s microphone and speakers useless.
Windows 10 does have a Dictation app, but requires you to trigger it with Windows + H, and works like Siri on your phone: sporadically and with clipped commands. Knowing when it speaks, when you should speak, when to let go of the keys, and listening for its feedback were challenging. Significantly, like your phone, if you don’t know what you’re going to say immediately as it begins listening, you get superfluous input or nothing at all.
Better tech is possibly better, but the failures were not theirs
Nerds might say an ad-blocker, using Alt+F4 to close windows, buying a bigger screen or better device, using Gmail or Outlook or some other software would help. This probably would help. And for millions of people who have prolonged visual, mobility, dexterity, or audio impairment this is probably what they do. On-device screen readers can work in their native apps like Edge or Safari respectively, which is something, but they’re also an impossibly limiting and frustrating experience because of what we throw at them to read.
My client wants to work on their book, read text messages, and send emails. And wants to do so, hopefully, for a couple of months with a little help until his vision returns. My client’s not trying to build a house with custom power tools. They just want to send emails.
Waking up one morning and telling yourself we need $300 in Dragon Dictation software, (which only works with Outlook and Gmail), switching email to somewhere else, learning a whole new paradigm, buying a new microphone, or just getting better at holding the device are all wrong answers.
In my research, I learned Medicare allows people to request a Mobility Coach that can help train patients on this stuff at the request of a physician. Thing is, you have to get the referral, go through an intake process, and then someone will get to you in 8-10 weeks. At 84, time’s ticking, and 8-10 weeks is a long time.
This is not their fault and it’s not the fault of any user. This tech is lousy and hostile. It’s unfriendly and annoying. Web, app, and software developers have made equally unfriendly products. Everything from web pages to emails and software. And Medicare is surely overloaded on being able to quickly send some therapist to every house that needs it on demand.
I’m sure things are getting better, all things considered. Certainly the software on an iPhone today is better than it was ten years ago. But a lot of things are working against all of us.
For my part, I think about the emails we design for clients and the webpages we make. I think about the constraints I have in making those.
There isn’t a week that goes by that someone doesn’t want me to dump a scanned PDF document from an office copier on to the web. For screen readers, this is a non-starter.
Almost no day goes by without someone asking me to put together some infographic or cute thing to stick somewhere. Hand-drawn fonts and other unique typographic features might look attractive, but they’re a waking nightmare for many people.
People constantly ask to “Put these photos in our next email”. Those dozen photos not only bloat email bandwidth requirements, but they’re also seldom worth much even to fully-sighted people.
Shoving ads “up top” or in bigger spaces so people “will be sure to see them” seems easy enough to ignore with eyes. But for my client, this not only made the web tougher to use, it also wasted a lot of time. The myriad spam texts and emails would have easily taken an hour to work through by listening. You or I would just swipe, swipe, swipe. Or, select “Edit” and selected many items at once. This option is largely disabled in VoiceOver.
Clients always want some visual distinction. Having a unique design, made popular by the throngs of visually attractive but largely empty templates from theme stores are what people pay for. It’s not what you or anyone wants, however. All those webpages that have cute counters that say how many cups of coffee your team consumes a day add nothing. Giant banners and sliders add nothing.
I’m constantly fighting a battle where clients want to add links to external websites, PDFs, and images directly in their menus. This is bad even for sighted users.
All of these things are battles designers and developers are fighting every day. And sometimes, myself included, I just don’t have the ability to fight all of them. A teammate will ask me, “Are we really doing this?” and all I can utter is “This just isn’t a hill I’m willing to die on.”
This is frustrating because why on earth am I fighting? And then I realize what is we’re saying:
Remove distractions and “tricks”, like banner ads at the top of a page
Invest in web and language accessibility
Recreate material to be accessible when it otherwise isn’t
YouTube videos need a transcript for those who can’t hear
Websites need compelling and useful audits of all images, links, and behavior
There’s no easy way to make a website better or more accessible. And that costs time, money, and for a lot of clients doesn’t pay the bills. Like adding an elevator to your house. Most clients would rather us invent a “make money” button and just press that time and time again.
But there is overlap. We took a look at a website of ours and measured how many clicks it took to buy something versus competitors. We took half as many clicks. From an accessibility standpoint, that’s good for all users because everyone gets done faster.
But we do it in fewer clicks by not asking for things like phone numbers and “how did you hear about us?” at checkout. That’s a battle we have to fight but really shouldn’t have to.
There are no plugins for this that you can just install and walk away from. There is no service. It’s like going to the gym: it’s hard work that requires time, deliberate thought, and dedication.
Developers need to start bundling the costs of this kind of work into their service. And if clients don’t want to pay, then I say having nothing is better. We have to stop pumping garbage on to the web.
Developers also need to learn about what it takes to make sites accessible and test for them just as rigorously as we test mobile layouts vs. desktop ones.
I’m sure I’m not the only person that has random, unimportant memories of long-ago events. I keep remembering a time in high school where my high school principal yelled at me for borrowing a library book.
I’m sure I’m not the only person that has random, unimportant memories of long-ago events. I keep remembering a time in high school where my high school principal yelled at me for borrowing a library book.
It was his idea that on Wednesdays we’d read a book for 22-minutes during homeroom. Or as the contemporaries called it, “Activity Period”. What a dumb, soul-sucking name.
Wednesday’s “activity” was silent, sustained reading, which begat the soul-sucking SSR acronym straight from some equally wretched “workgroup”.
I had finished whatever book I had been reading about ten minutes into the allotted time. Not being a psychopath, I wasn’t keen on just starting right back on page 1. So I asked to go to the library, was granted permission, and walked downstairs. After a few minutes I picked up another and walked back upstairs.
Just as I exited the library, the principal turned to me and yelled, “Where is your book young man?” It was in my hand. In fact, it was the only thing I had on me. In retrospect, I probably should have asked if he had just been staring at the sun and couldn’t see it. Maybe he thought I had come downstairs for tea.
“Just finished one and came to get another,” I said, holding up the book. I didn’t stop walking.
Then I remember turning around and standing there watching him yell and stomp around because I wasn’t actively reading. No one else was around. It was just him and me in the hallway. My only hope is that the expression on my face was clear I thought he was insane.
He told me I needed to be reading “right now”. Short of sitting down in the hallway, I didn’t know what else he expected me to do. I’m sure I just said “Okay” and walked on.
I also remember the feeling of losing all respect for the man at that moment. Now, all these years later, the fact I even remember this at all irritates me. Literally every time I finish a book or pick up another I think, “Should I call him and ask if it’s okay that I finished a book today?” What a terrible thing to think.
Today I look back on this and think three things:
We know task-switching leaves “residue” on our brains. You can’t go from, say, cooking a new recipe to replying to emails without your brain thinking about the last thing you just did for a while. Most estimates are about 15 minutes to fully switch tasks. So in a 22-minute reading slot, about 7 minutes are actually useful. What a waste.
I’m sure the whole exercise was designed to check a box at the end of the school year to say, “The kids read a combined 9 hours of sustained independent reading.” And really, isn’t that sad for any activity? “Over six months, we spent 9 hours reading!” I’m sure it’s also the only way they could guarantee some people even read anything at all.
The most damning legacy of our schools is that they are centers for knowledge transfer, not a place for instilling a love of learning. Events like this are why fully a third of Americans admit to not reading a single book in a year.
We say that phrase “love of learning” and a lot of people roll their eyes. It is a wimpy phrase. But we should really think about it as “Teaching people how to do hard things with our minds”. Everyone has to do this to get ahead. You want to learn how to write a new programming language, drive or operate a new piece of machinery, install something, offer a compelling report, manage your health, learn new exercises, or design a new tool? You’re going to need to have sustained and focused effort at that task. It’s during processes like these to improve ourselves or our work that we have displayed an ability to grok new things. To learn!
Reading just happens to be the most common activity people do that requires a little thought. Watching TV, for instance, is passive. Reading requires comprehension of the words and, in most cases, imagining the events and people involved in your head. Like how driving to the store down the street is passive, but walking there is active. Neither is likely hard, but one is certainly more active.
For most adults who don’t enjoy reading today, we’d do well to ask ourselves why. I now recognize I struggled to find books I actually enjoyed reading. It took me over 10 years to realize I liked biographies and memoirs. I read one in 10th grade — a book I picked up from a Walden Books, but didn’t make the connection that I liked it because it was a memoir. I started reading more from time to time, but it took me another ten years to figure that out and learn that fiction just isn’t my jam. In retrospect, I don’t recall there being a lot of historical biographies on the shelves of my school library. Maybe there were, but I just hadn’t figured that out.
But militant yelling and drilling don’t help a 15-year-old, either. Maybe my principal was having a bad day. I’m sure he thought it was my responsibility to make sure I had a book to get through all 22 minutes of reading. But there he is, in the back of my head spitting fire every time I need a new book. I’ve recorded 380 read finished books since I started tracking them on Goodreads. That’s 380 times that memory has hijacked my thoughts.
We talk a lot about the educators who shape our lives and make a long-lasting impact on us and our kids. But we should also talk about the educators who did the opposite. If we do, it might remind educators that as hard as their job is, every interaction can be mind-altering.
The unfortunate thing I feel about COVID-19 is how sad I feel for all the silver linings.
I’ve been able to attend more events with more people virtually than I have in-person. I’ve saved money on food. Not traveling to offices has saved me hours of time. Everything is more scheduled and regimented, meaning I get more focused time on specific projects. And social media is far less performative. I like those things. Many of these things are things we could have been doing all along. But I’m most saddened by the fact it took a global pandemic scare to get us here where millions of people have lost so much.
I don’t feel bad about having to do more virtually. It’s been good for me that I can take part in more events now that I can meet the same people online instead of off. I was never going to travel an hour this way or that, or book a flight and a hotel to attend your conference. But, now that it’s online, I can. And so can many other people. We always could have been doing that, and probably should have been. The lacking factor for many events is the experience and there’s value in that. But that value comes with a price tag.
Many people are saving money and perhaps their health because they’re not eating out for lunch every day. Again, that’s grim for restaurants and eateries, but no one can dispute it’s better to eat at home. It’s almost always cheaper, and it’s usually healthier. It’s hard to come up with something at home worse for you than McDonald’s or other fast food. And when your colleagues pressure you to go out, you go out. And it’s nearly impossible to find healthy places when you do. Do a search for “Healthy” on GrubHub and you get about 4 or 5 restaurants, one of which is probably Subway.
Office space is likely to see a lot of shifts after this is over. A lot of places are likely to stay on work-from-home protocols and reduce their office space. For many places that can’t do work from home, they’re likely to expand their office space in order to maintain more distance. That’s probably a net neutral, but it’s not bad if people have more options or reduce commuting by car.
Perhaps the biggest change is the ability to have more focus. Offices are not known for their productivity gains. Everyone’s best work comes from reducing distractions and implementing an optimal workspace. That might be using headphones, or it might be a speaker. It might be a podcast or classical music or something else. That might mean starting a little later or working a little earlier. It might be the comfort of knowing your kids are just downstairs, or the dog is happy and not in a crate or alone all day.
The equalization of networking and meetings is a big win for a lot of people. If you live on one side of town and have to travel to the other, you may have two hours of your day wrapped up in a car just moving around for what amounts to just hearing someone talk. That’s a huge savings for the people who can do so.
And one thing I’m not sad about at all: social media has become much less performative. I’d be interested if academic researchers are studying the mental health effects of social media right now. When you see all your friends living their “best lives” on the beach, with friends, out at pricey concerts and shows, you feel glum. We know this. Social media straight up increasesdepressionalmostuniversally. But now, no one can travel or fake it. All of the superficial detritus has been removed — no fashion, makeup, glitzy travel, FOMO, or the recognition someone you wanted to talk to is now out with a bunch of other people. I don’t know if the depression that comes from social media is shifting to just being depressed about the news and state of affairs of the world. Like office space, I suspect it’ll be a net-neutral effect.
These things are generally good. Sadly, it’s at the expense of so much in people’s livelihoods. And there’s a lot of variation here. Having the kids around all day can be a huge energy suck. But if you asked more people at the end of their lives if they would have wanted to spend more time with their kids, I suspect the answer would be yes.
That should be the quandary people who are largely unaffected beyond more time at home should feel. A lot of small things are legitimately better for a lot of people. And that’s sad.
For the last year or 18 months I’ve tried a radical self-experiment where I try to be useful to people. The idea being if I was responsive to people’s needs, they’d be happy, then they’d care about me.
This has not worked out that way. At least, I don’t believe it has. I don’t think there are somehow more people who care more or less about me. Some of the things I’ve done this last 12 months either quietly or publicly include:
Finishing my bachelor’s degree from 14 years ago (I finished August 8th)
Running for office and other political activities
Growing my business to maximum capacity
Much of this idea was a variant on the popular “don’t say no” strategy of relationship and activity-building. If someone asks you to do something, say yes. Maybe something fun will come of it. Except in rare circumstances, that has not been my case this year.
In fact, midway through writing this piece someone called to ask me to travel two hours away to speak to a group of people for 30 minutes. Not only do I not want to do that, I don’t have the time and it’s not particularly valuable.
The problem I’ve encountered, aside from the emotional impact, is I am not a multi-threaded human being. No one is, really. People who are adept at moving between tasks and jobs probably come about that way either only in appearance or by some kind of mental disorder, like bipolar disorder or by being a sociopath. Theodore Roosevelt’s many adventures come to mind. Not only would we consider him a genius by today’s standards, many historians believe he also probably suffered some kind of bipolar disorder to make him swing between manic activity and disregard for life and calmer times to do things like writing.
Humans are not multi-threaded machines, and last I checked I am human. We know this from decades of research, but the human brain is too messy to be able to switch from one task to another without the first task lingering. This gets more complicated as you add stress, anxiety, and other tension like relationships to the mix.
The more I’ve done this year the more convinced I become I’m better suited to slow thinking. I’ve often told people off-handedly “I’m a slow thinker about these things”. The reality is I’m much more inclined to do a few things with more attention than many things with a little attention. I’m also much more inclined to do things I actually have a shot at winning. Much of my time this year has been spent on tasks that deserve more time than I can give and are, generally, unwinnable or unachievable.
And therein lies the nugget of this post: there is nothing more satisfying than accomplishment. And I don’t have many accomplishments this year.
You may look at that list and see fine things. I look at it and see projects that haven’t succeeded, gone far, or weren’t all that hard (undergraduate classes by and large are not that hard, for instance).
The strategy for next year is different: fewer pursuits of new clients, saying “no” more, focusing on projects to the extent they can become something, and being a more single-threaded, slow thinker.
