2020-08-27
This article was originally published on the BuzzFeed Tech Blog
Header image by Devin Argenta
Last month, external accessibility experts certified buzzfeed.com as compliant with the best accessibility practices for the web. That simple statement, ripped straight from the headlines of a boilerplate internal email, does not do justice to the two-year process that brought us to that point. Nor does it embody what the achievement means to our team, especially myself, on a personal level.
2016-08-22
Last year, surgeons removed my grandad’s left leg below the knee. He has had the daily symptoms of diabetes for as long as I can remember. A visit to my grandparents’ house as a child meant being fascinated and unnerved in equal measure by insulin needles on the kitchen table, insulin needles piercing his belly.
My grandad is an engineer. He was a car mechanic when he was younger, he worked in a steel mill, he was a maintenance guy at hospitals. His garage is really just a workshop, with a half dozen of those huge tool cabinets, full of every size and configuration of spanner and wrench. When I was young, most of my visits there involved assembling something and playing with it. He was a hobbyist photographer: he turned his shed into a darkroom and developed pictures of street lamps in the snow.