As this is the last day of the year I will dedicate this post to personal reflections about 2022. Mainly successes but also some failures. As failures often teach us more.
Looking back at 2022, especially when remembering what I wrote in my January post about plans for 2022, I think I can say I succeeded in most of my plans. And there were some obstacles that I wasn’t expecting, but hey, such is life.
The main disappointment of 2022 for me will be the experience with a customer that cancelled all accessibility efforts. I will not name them, and it does not really matter as I will try to take it as a learning experience. We did the estimates, we planned them, we got the budget and we got the people that were willing to learn and fix things after my overall accessibility audit. And we started working on things, fixing problems, besides delivering new features and fixing old bugs. But then the management changed and people left and on the end the accessibility program was dropped as well. I learned quite a lot about organizational problems with this experience and will probably make a post about it later, but I do count it as a failure. Because I was not even invited to present the program to the new leadership. It was just dropped…
I was fortunate to be able to get an accessibility expert to be my mentor, and getting Léonie Watson to be my mentor was just amazing. I felt like I knew here due to all the talks and articles and GitHub comments I’ve seen before actually getting in Zoom calls with her. I had never had a mentor like her, and I feel like I won the lottery because I could talk with her one to one, discuss all things accessibility from low level technical details to high level strategic dilemmas. Besides her being the expert on accessibility she is also an amazing person. I will always cherish these moments and I love the fact that we keep in touch.
I managed to contribute a bit to open source in 2022. Unfortunately not as much as I would like to, but considering the limited time and new endeavors I can say that I at least did something. Check my GitHub profile for details (opens in new window), but I did some pull requests that were accepted. Most proud of my contribution to web.dev, fixing a small but important detail in the aria-label text start (opens in new window). I also added some references to documentation while participating in Hacktoberfest 2022 (opens in new window) for the first time.
Léonie invited me to performance.now() 2022 (opens in new window) and besides meeting her and her husband in person I also met Hidde de Vries (blog opens in new window). Due to airline problems she had to leave early, so we didn’t get much time together, but it was extremely cool to be able to learn about web performance and meet her in person at the same time. I prefer online attendance, but the in-person networking is way more powerful, that I have to admit.
Investing in knowledge, besides attending performance.now() was on my daily agenda. I’ve read approximately 600 articles on the subject of accessibility and I’ve also made ca. 200 notes on other sources. I also bought two courses from experts that I will not go into details now. At the same time I invested some time and learned from two famous accessibility vendors that offer their academies. So yes – I still learn each and every day and will continue to do so.
I kept my blogging pace at one blog post per week and it was not easy every time. Especially when on vacation and when I worked overtime. But I managed it. Some posts do have shorter form than others but I really try to write them with some value for the reader in mind.
Teaching is also learning and I did some presentations internally and externally that made me do a lot of preparation. They were quite good, but I would need even more preparation to be better. And as I am more introvert I count it as an accomplishment when I go on stage and present to 40 people. It’s a big thing for me, because younger me hated public presentations. But a lot of room for improvement. I am honest about that. And presenting behind screen, via Zoom is way easier than presenting in person. But at the same time you get valuable feedback and can adjust presentation style when needed. It takes practice, that’s it. And I will have to practice more.
I asked my day job CEO for permission to do some evening and weekend freelancing in the field of accessibility. Lucky for me he said yes. And shortly after I signed a contract as a freelancer. Waited with opening my own sole proprietorship IDEA-lab Cerovac until I got enough hours to send my first invoice. IDEA stands for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility as I will also do other things. And it looks like I was quite busy – I made 11 full scale audits for native mobile applications (Android and iOS) and some medium large websites. I learned a lot about native mobile app accessibility because I tried to come with proper suggestions for remediation. Checking official Swift and Android documents revealed a lot of possibilities that I thought were not possible on native.
I was lucky to be invited to brainstorm about a new automatic accessibility testing tool. My aXeSia is still working OK for me but due to time limitations I am not actively working on it. So it was nice to be able to come with some suggestions for another tool that has the resources to really evolve.
Although I hate the new policies behind Twitter, especially abandonment of its accessibility department, I still appreciate the folks on the platform. And occasionally it can really be amazing what can come out of the online networking and for me it happened when I was contacted by a fellow accessibility expert from Slovenia that is looking to make an accessibility institute there. After some mails and zoom meetings I agreed to be a volunteer for the new institute and accepted the role of “professional head of the institute”. I love the ideas behind the institute, especially that we will have a representation from people with disabilities. Looking forward to contributing there and that we will all learn from each other.
So, to conclude, 2022 for me was amazing actually. Besides one less fortunate journey that I can still learn from, I think I accomplished my plans. Could do more if I pushed myself more, but then again I don’t like to experience burnout and similar things. We must take care for ourselves before we can take care about others as well. And being a parent really reminds you about that.
