A Messy Reflection on 2024

Composed Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Introduction

Well, not all of 2024. Maybe just since September.

In September 2024, I made the unhinged decision to pursue a career in digital accessibility while I knew precious little about what the field even was. I knew that the WCAG existed and I knew vaguely what it contained. I knew that progressively-enhanced semantic HTML was good and that React was bad. I knew that <div> should not be used where a <button> would be more appropriate.

Since then, I have spent my time learning, and I now know more things! I do not yet feel like I know even a sixth of the things I eventually need to know in order to be truly good at this. But I am learning, and this blog continues to grow. Additionally, I will soon have a certification that certifies that I have learned something, meaning I will soon have both formal and informal proof that I know more now than when I started.

I continue to have my doubts and anxieties about this whole endeavor. But I'd like to share some thorns and roses about the process, now that I'm past the three-month mark.

Three Things That Have Been Surprisingly Cool

1. How I Interact with Websites Has Changed

There are two levels to this. First, I can't help but spot weird suspicious labels and bad colour contrast on every website I visit. I passively assess nearly every product I interact with for accessibility. Every single time I see no respect for Pause, Stop, Hide, my head buzzes. It even extends to the physical worlds. I am very aware of when there is Braille signage and when there is not.

Secondly, and this is the more useful one, is that I've learned how I can customize tech to my user preferences. I now understand how to use keyboard-only navigation and that saves a lot of time on miscellaneous tasks. I also am nearly always using zoom on every website I visit, and I get jaded whenever a website isn't set up to be responsive. I know how to turn styles off of a website if things are just dastardly. I know how to very easily fire up a screen reader whenever I just can't be bothered to read the text normally, and I know weird hacky things with Reading Mode I can do to surpass cognitive barriers whenever I'm faced with content I must read, but really can't otherwise bring myself to.

2. Feeling Like Maybe My Humanities Degree Isn't Useless

Accessibility touts itself as a progressive field, but very little work has been done on the theoretical side to examine the various political dimensions of how the industry sustains itself and what can actually be done to align the field, which (observationally) largely consists of non-Disabled white cisgender men, with the broader goals of Disabled liberation.

A lot of folks with very noble intentions get attracted to this field, but they tend to burn out the fastest. Amongst a myriad of other factors, one reason this happens is because of the many inherent contradictions that lay at the center of this field. Many of them are the result of poorly integrated progressive politics amidst many systemic barriers that both reward actors who run counter to the digital accessibility field's stated goals of an internet for all and equivalant participation. The same paradoxes stifle innovation and keep accessibility talent operating at a status quo that can be sometimes very unimaginative.

I feel like my humanities degree, which focused largely on critical theory and racial justice, gave me the chops to start exploring some of that on my own. I hope to find and dictate to myself how I can engage with this field in a sustainable way as I explore these various dimensions. I also feel like this is an angle for which I have something novel to contribute to the conversation.

3. Joyfully Creating My Everyday

I feel like for the first time in my life, I am empowered to create my own structured learning and my own daily routines and I am empowered to hold myself accountable to those routines. Everyday feels like a new playground to test new productivity strategies, to analyze my metrics, to create an everyday for myself that I feel is a good and joyful life to live. This doesn't entirely emerge from my foray into digital accessibility, but digital accessibility provides me with tangible goals that I can use as a north star.

When I graduated university, I lost routine. I lost structure. It left me quite severely disregulated. But this happy little website, and my happy little life, are proof to me that I can indeed exercise control over my own narrative and set my own goals and pursue them. It feels like a training ground for greater things. I derive optimism from it. Even if I'm so far away from where I want to be, the journey, the routines and the control I have over it together make up my happy place.

It didn't need to be digital accessibility. It could have been basket weaving. But it was digital accessibility, and I am therefore grateful.

Three Things that Have Been Bleak or Demotivating

1. That Which Shall Not Be Named

2. Being Forced To Learn Tech Bro Culture

One of my knowledge gaps that I did not anticipate needing to cover was learning about Tech Bro culture and acclimatizing to Tailwind enthusiasts and React shills. And I need to learn them because I know that I will be rubbing shoulders with them and I need to be able to hold my ground and not get talked down to.

So, unfortunately, that is some of what I will be doing in the new year. Since the beginning, the requirement of technical knowledge has always intimidated me. But slowly realizing that it wasn't the technology I needed to be afraid of, but the people using said technology, was simply unexpected.

3. Business 101

This has been the most paralyzing thing to crop up by far.

I don't know how to sell myself or how to operate, dialogue, or locomote in the Corporate World.

I don't know how to gain clients. I don't know how to set things up. I know very little.

I want to be able to earn money.

Goals for the New Year?

January 1st seems like an inopportune time to set goals because a year is so long and I'm in the middle of things right now. Weird to suddenly change directions just to coincide with a change of calendar.

As an alternative for the more widely practiced 'New Years Resolution,' CGPGrey suggests the idea of the 'Yearly Theme' as an affirmation of priority for the coming year. Instead of making a concrete goal that you might fail, setting a theme that can span across multiple sectors of your life and can adapt to multiple circumstances is more robust. If I were to entertain this exercise momentarily, I'd probably land on a yearly theme like 'Year of Branching Out' or 'Year of New Connections' or 'Year of People' given how much I want to get employed.

But he also suggests an alternative of 'seasonal themes,' suggesting that the year itself might be too long of a unit to meaningfully set priorities for. We could also do a 'semiannual theme' or things of the like.

I think I will postpone my theme until the CPACC exam is over and done with.