Empowering Technology for Everyone
Imagine a world where technology is accessible and empowering to everyone, regardless of abilities or limitations. This is the vision driving my accessibility initiative, a passionate pursuit to help shatter accessibility and limitation barriers to empower individuals everywhere. Through my work, I strive to develop innovative technologies with the aim to help increase accessibility. Lets make the World more accessible.
Accessibility Challenges
While accessibility technologies for computers and personal devices have improved significantly, programs like Apple's VoiceOver and JAWS screen reader still struggle to access many websites and web-based applications. This is a major issue that affects many individuals, governments, businesses, and organizations to provide assessable websites for those with visual and physical impairment.
To understand the challenges further, I recommend watching this video: here. It explains the issues and highlights the need for content and website creation tools to better address accessibility concerns.
Software
Years ago, I embarked on a mission to simplify website creation and improve website accessibility for people with visual and other impairments. This passion project, fueled by countless hours and a relentless desire to make a difference, led to the creation of StackSite.
My personal journey with visual impairment began in my youth when I temporarily lost my sight for many days. Since then, I have experienced occasional episodes of optic neuritis, with vision impairments. More recently, I have struggled with painful and debilitating limitations mainly in the use of my hands, feet, and speech.
StackSite served as a functional prototype toolkit experiment, showcasing various innovative concepts utilizing a mix of web and pre-experimental software language standards, along with some custom polyfills I created. In simpler terms, StackSite was an experimental web-based toolkit for website management, including features like layouts, sections, rows, columns, menus, content areas, and more. Its ultimate goal was to simplify website creation and eventually integrate accessibility features. You can explore my early work on StackSite at github.com/zoshe/stacksite
While StackSite addressed some initial goals, it remained in the experimental stage due to its reliance on non-existent web language standards at the time. Without a clear path forward and facing no established standards, I shelved the project around 2010 to address more pressing needs. This included caring for others and focusing on crucial research to explore potential treatments or cures for various dire illnesses.
It wasn't until 2020 that advances in browser support for new standards reignited my passion for simplifying website creation and enhancing accessibility. Inspired by my mother and her late-life vision challenges, I embarked on a new mission, aptly named after my Mom, Helen. This endeavor involved applying these new standards to create new innovative tools, to successfully overcoming the limitations that hindered StackSite. I aim to continue development and make these tools available across various platforms in the near future.
Volunteers Needed
If you're passionate about software accessibility issues and want to volunteer as a software programmer or engineer to help code the Helen software, please visit the volunteer page to inquire.