#the original also spoon feeds most of the things about the context

[moviemunchies]

Okay, so this is an older one, but I saw it recently and I thought it’d be fun to do a review on.

So! Captain from Castile!

Based on the novel by Samuel Shellabarger, Captain from Castile tells the story of Pedro de Vargas, a young Spanish nobleman, who decides to help an escaped slave from the New World, Coatl, in getting away from his abusive master. Said master has powerful friends in the Inquisition, and frames the de Vargas family for heresy. After saving what remains of his family, Pedro has to escape to the New World to avoid the Inquisition’s wrath, and he joins the Cortes Expedition, becoming Cortes’s right-hand man, and one of the conquistadors who helps to conquer Mexico.

Alright, we should talk about that Cortes thing, yeah? I kept wondering what we’re supposed to think of Cortes in this movie. At times, the movie seemed to act like joining this conquest was a noble endeavor. Our heroes sign up for the expedition not only to escape the authorities chasing them, but also because it’s presented as a grand adventure with a chance for wealth and great fun.

And yet, at other times, it’s clear that that film knows that the Spanish conquest of Mexico wasn’t really a good thing. The priest on the expedition keeps trying to get Cortes to prioritize spreading Christianity and is bothered by how much they emphasize gold and land instead. One of the indigenous characters points out that the Spanish are invading, slaughtering, and enslaving people who have done nothing to them in return. The film’s depiction of Cortes is also an interesting, ambiguous figure, who is happy to help our heroes; other times, he’s obviously in it for himself.

Side note: an astonishing number of the characters in the movie are based off of real people The main character and his family? No. But Cortes’s expedition? The named characters are real people.

I’m not against this, actually–I’m rather for it, in fact. People are complex! Cortes is very good to the people who help him get what he wants, and that doesn’t change that he’s a greedy, conniving bastard. The movie isn’t spoon feeding you what you’re supposed to think about historical events and figures, even if it does dramatize many of them. I’m not saying it’s an accurate depiction of those things, and given how little actual violence there is on-screen, I can’t say that it’s not whitewashing what happened; only that I appreciate it’s not holding the audience’s hand, or trying to make these people out to be spotless, completely noble people.

The movie does have this problem, too, of forgetting about some of its characters. Pedro’s family is more or less forgotten when he leaves Spain, when protecting them is a large part of his character in the first part of the film. Yes, they’re theoretically safe in Italy, so I guess they’re okay? Pedro’s original would-be fiance doesn’t have it so lucky. She’s almost completely forgotten, and has no more scenes, which felt egregious because she actually wanted to help Pedro when he was framed by the Inquisition. Then there’s Coatl–he DOES reappear later in the movie, then does something significant, and is never mentioned again. From context, he’s most likely dead, but no one sheds a tear or even brings him up despite how important he was to the story’s resolution.

Pedro has a love interest named ‘Catana’, pronounced like most people pronounce the Japanese sword, which is downright weird for a name? I’ve never seen it before, and I spent a significant portion of my watching experience wondering if I’d misheard. Nope. Her love story with Pedro isn’t too bad, though I think Pedro jumps into it too quickly; as a former nobleman, he’d have some trouble accepting that he would be in a relationship with a former kitchen maid, I think.

There’s an undercurrent, especially in the film’s conclusion, about how this is the NEW WORLD, and it should leave the intolerances and classism of the Old World behind (and also be a noble, Christian country of equality, because this is a 1947 movie, after all). It’s a noble sentiment, sure; at the same time, with that speech at the end I couldn’t help but respond with, “Yeah, we’ll see how that goes.” Because we know how the conquest of Mexico is going to go down. It’s not pretty. 

It’s a good adventure movie, I think, and one with more nuance than I’d really expect from this era and this setting. It makes me think I should go pick up the book to see how it handles the material. And it makes me wish that I’d seen this movie earlier. If you’re into old movies, go ahead and give it a try.

[gcldfanged]

whyfor have I followed thee~?: I admit, as a fellow 30+ queer transmasc human, seeing such in a fellow writer AND their muse somehow acts immediately as a draw. There is a fellow vulnerability that frequently lends to the greatest and most heartbreaking and mending creativity I've ever been priviledged to be involved in. Jae-hyo's history itself was also a draw. From his traumatic entrapment beneath his abusers, to his freedom clawed and kept primally against his scars with enough pressure to make the soul bleed-- he as a character that enthralled me from the very first. I admittedly also jumped for joy at finding another person unafraid to explore the darker aspects of fiction. For me, there is catharsis in writing the blacker shades of angst and being in control of the outcome- in putting my own creations through hell- one of my own ocs has history of being enslaved, and... you were just an amazing blog to behold.

Whyfore doth mine steps continue to dog thine shadow~?: one of the first things to catch my attention in original characters tends to be depth. do they breathe? are the variety of actions sensible to THEM as a person and not just an empty reaction to what is going on? do they MATCH the event? and sure, some of that comes from the variety of prose folx can use and one's writing style. but i regularly read your rp posts and literally visualise whatever is unfolding out. I'm regularly engaged with Jae-hyo's internal exposition, invested in the glances and glints of his past through such. Sometimes when it's a full look and the name and pronouns change, I mentally go 'it's okay darlin', it's not forever!!' XDDDD

You allow me to be educated as well. Which I am infinitely grateful for. Your ooc is also a delight (even when life shits on your flapjacks x.x), and your humour has more than once made me laugh aloud. I wanna write with you so bad, and I hope life begins to treat you better soon~.

Hey friend, I'm making food/thinking over my reply, but I really want to give you a heartfelt thank you- It really means a lot to me that you feel something from my work and enjoy the kinds of themes I explore with Jae… I often worry that people will look at the darker content and think I'm a try-hard or that Jae is a Misery Stu made to entertain an author boner for the 'over the top' and 'melodramatic', as if these very events don't happen in REAL LIFE and affect 'regular' people too ('regular' people, like ME, for example).

It really seems like critical thinking is dead these days. I remember reading a very excellent gay romance/fantasy novel that happened to examine slavery and sexual slavery in it's society and the overwhelming amount of negative reviews it had on GoodReads was shocking- All because it dared to even have slavery as a topic in the book, without examining the context in which it affects and is seen by the characters themselves. Literally, all the reviews were the same, basically saying "this book is garbage because it has slavery in it, ew" kind of vapid and mindless refusal to engage. Which, granted, they have the right to not engage, but oh my god???

It just honestly makes me mad- Am I supposed to be impressed other people choose to be ignorant and have a superiority complex about only enjoying characters they see as morally good or if they're not morally good, have the capacity for redemption? Or they're only good simply because they are 'relatable', like people need to step outside the narrow scope of their own experiences, I am begging-

Similarly, I have been stalking your blogs and I know things have been pretty rough on the both of us outside of roleplaying, so I'm always more than happy and willing to chat whenever we have the free time and spoons. Your portrayals and characterizations have been feeding me well despite absences and hiatuses between the both of us.

Thanks again for the kind words and time taken to express them, it's definitely helping me be less anxious about the idea of publishing my original works...

[laurakinney]

might fuck around and reread young avengers

[worstloki]

Isn't it exhausting this whole discourse on the Loki series? On one side, those of us who didn't like it are defending our opinions and each other, on the other it feels like swimming against the current since so many people bash and criticize and attack us and it feels useless at the end of the day. So thanks to you and everyone else who keep up the fight and makes the ones like us not feel alone in the struggle.

signed: an ace, bullied, neurodivergent bookworm who saw themselves in the original Loki and wished for him to be treated better and find real friends and closure (and not whatever it was the series)

I think the main issues with this tend to be that:

- Many people conflate liking something to it being objectively good, so even when admitting it has flaws or seeing them acknowledged they do not like to see them listed or think about why they are not good, or what implications the bad things in the media could have. (It's how military propaganda and bad messages and racism in the MCU can completely go over people's heads)

- People wind up meshing canon and fanon (perfectly fine to do for fun, but perhaps not the best thing when canon is being discussed)

- A majority of the audience is casual! The general target audience is just watching for plain old entertainment! Which is valid bc I watched it with no expectations and enjoyed it greatly, but, most people are not going to sit around and ponder over how loosely the plot is strung together or care if a character is acting different! Not everyone is invested or attached to the story being told the same amount! (The Loki series does a great job of spoon-feeding the audience what they should be getting from different scenes, and in itself isn't complex and has really simple concepts spoken aloud so it's real easy to get tricked here in what we're shown vs told)

- People rely on others to know canon they mayn't recall for themselves... this is especially evident in claims of 'what the show did' in interviews and when people argue on larger meanings in the show without providing arguments/evidence of how such things were portrayed. (Sometimes even when provided the examples are so loosely strung together it reminds me of writing essays without reading the text - but it's not like everyone remembers the show perfectly or looks into the context of lines to make sure they make sense and are consistent with what is being argued... this also includes retcons which can, for all the MCU's consistency, go unnoticed at large)

Things get a bit repetitive, yes, so I try to avoid discourse... people are going to see things differently, and that's fine. As long as no one is harassing others for what they do/don't like everything is chill. People shouldn't have to defend their opinions, and discussing things from different angles should be encouraged if we're looking at interpretations.

[minmotl]

Ch. 68: Tang Fan Spills Medicine Over Injured Sui Zhou & Makes Him Take Off His Pants

Context: Tang Fan, Sui Zhou and their surviving subordinates have escaped the tomb and won against the remnants of the White Lotus Sect members camping outside their escape route. They should be celebrating, but trouble has only begun for Tang Fan. Although Yin Yuan Hua’s death was hardly his fault, their rivalry is still well-known back in the imperial city. Yin Yuan Hua’s direct supervisor makes use of this opportunity to lodge a complaint about Tang Fan having failed as a leader, and Tang Fan’s powerful allies in the ministry are all sent away. This case must have a scapegoat, and the Emperor, hearing all the complaints about Tang Fan from another official as well, decides to suspend him from his rank and title.

Before they deal with that, however, Tang Fan tries to take care of an injured Sui Zhou on their way back, and is unsurprisingly, absolutely useless at taking care of someone else.

*Note: Tang Fan is referring to a previous incident later when Sui Zhou teased him about his... after making him take off his pants (for a good reason).

Introduction Post | Masterpost

—

Highlights under the cut

In Tang Fan’s eyes, his person career advancement will never be as important as the health of his friends and companions. He orders Cheng Wen and the rest to properly record all the treasures and also rejects Magistrate He’s attempts to make him stay, bringing everyone on the journey back to the imperial city.

They are not as much in a rush this time on the way back because they have to take care of those who are injured. The journey cannot be too fast and they must often take rests at outposts along the way meant for officials.

Magistrate He helped them to prepare several carriages and inside, several thick layers of soft covers have been placed to ferry the injured. A physician is also accompanying them on this journey and he can help to prescribe and brew medicine, and also to treat wounds.

As Sui Zhou’s internal organs have been wounded, he needs to to rest often and adding to that, he has to drink medicine that has herbs that would help with his sleep, so on this entire journey, he has spent most of the days in sleep.

Those who are injured need someone to take care of them, and the only woman in this convoy is Lady Chen. However, as she’s a wanted criminal, she can enjoy sitting in a single carriage, but her hands and legs have been trapped with heavy cuffs. There are supervising men stationed before and behind this carriage. Tang Fan cannot let her come and take care of Sui Zhou, and so Tang-daren volunteers bravely to take on the responsibility of attending to this patient.

Pang Qi is immensely touched at how noble Tang-daren is.

And at this moment, Sui Zhou is still unconscious in rest, otherwise he would be the first one to jump up and oppose this… but the ship has sailed and there is no time for him to even protest.

After Sui Zhou wakes up, he realises that the person who is delivering his medicine to him has change from the accompanying physician to Tang Fan.

“…”

“What is it?” Tang Fan asks.

“Where’s the physician?”

“He’s helping others to change their dressings, I’ll feed you today,” Tang Fan answers.

Sui Zhou’s smile is forced as he says, “No need, I can do this myself.”

Tang Fan thinks that he’s only being courteous, and then presses him down, “The physician said, forcing all of you to journey back at this point is already harmful to your injuries. If you can lie down just lie down, then you can recover quickly! How close are we, you don’t have to stand on ceremony with me!”

Sui Zhou is speechless, thinking that he would truly like to stand on ceremony with him.

Tang-daren scoops out a spoonful of the medicine and is about to bring it to Sui Zhou’s mouth. He then remembers the way Sui Zhou took care of him when he was ill, and learns from him by placing the spoon to his lips to test the temperature, before sending it over.

And yet, just as it is about to arrive at its destination, Tang Fan’s hand shakes.

Sui Zhou, “…”

Tang Fan, “…”

Sui Zhou, “It’s best if I drink it myself.”

Tang Fan laughs, “I’m just not used to this, sorry, sorry! Or we can change a position?”

He uses his sleeves to wipe at Sui Zhou’s shirt and places the bowl aside first. He then helps Sui Zhou up so that he is half leaning on him, then picks up the bowl, carefully bringing it up to Sui Zhou’s mouth. He slants the spoon slightly, thinking that this time, his hand will not shake, at least.

Unexpectedly, a woman’s scream resounds from the outside, and then it is followed by the sounds of chaos from a startled bunch of men and horses.

After a moment, they then hear Qian San Er’s voice, “Sui-daren, sorry about this and that we disturbed your rest. Lady Chen was screaming for no reason and insisted that someone was peeping at her as she was changing clothes. We didn’t startle you did we, Sui-daren?”

Tang Fan, “…”

Sui Zhou, “…”

This time, the whole bowl of medicine has been spilled on Sui Zhou’s face. Thankfully the medicine’s temperature was just nice, otherwise they will have to add another item to the list of Sui Zhou’s injuries.

Sui Zhou is left with no choice but to remove the bowl from his face, and says, “I’ll do it myself.”

Tang Fan is speechless, “Guang Chuan, I really did not meant to…”

Although Sui Zhou is the victim of this, he wants to laugh, “I know, but you are not the type to assist others like this. Get someone to brew another bowl, you just have to stay and chat with me.”

He has to comply unconditionally with the patient’s requests. Tang Fan is reinvigorated, “Sure, what do you want to talk about?”

Sui Zhou, “… You should help me get another set of clothes to change first.”

“Oh, oh, oh,” Tang Fan says.

Seeing Tang Fan get up to help him find clothes, Sui Zhou cannot help but feel helpless but also slightly sweet inside. Helpless, because Tang Fan cannot even take care of himself and wants to take care of others - anyone who is taken care of by him will end up in a pitiful condition. And slightly sweet because… Sui Zhou does not need to describe it, as long as he himself knows what it is about.

After a moment, Tang-daren comes back with a pile of clothes.

Sui Zhou has internal injuries and his hands and legs are fine. The physician asked him to recover in peace and quiet, but never said that he cannot move entirely, so changing his own clothes is not a problem. However, Tang Fan insists that he feels guilty and wants to make amends for what he did earlier. Sui Zhou is unable to refuse this face filled with sincerity, and can only silently agree to Tang Fan’s offer.

Sui Zhou’s bronze-coloured abs and muscles are revealed as his inner layer is removed. From the lines of his arms and chest, one can see that he definitely has trained hard on a daily basis. At the same time, as he frequently needs to walk on the edge of danger and has been through many battles, the old marks left by wounds on his body are not little. Some are old and the colours have become very light, but some of them he got a few days ago in the tomb, and are only starting to scab over.

And yet it is this body littered with scars and marks that are a testament to how manly and masculine he is. Without the cover of clothes, he is definitely more imposing than usual. Even if he is wounded now and sitting on the bed, the first thing every person will think of is that this is a sleeping lion, and not a sick cat.

Originally, it would have been fine to just change his outerwear and the inner layer, but Tang Fan insists on changing the full set, making him change his pants as well together. Sui Zhou has no choice but to go along with it. And in the end, when he takes off his pants, he sees Tang-daren eyeing him there, and mischievously he says, “So the shape looks like that.”

Sui Zhou, “…”

How well Tang Fan holds onto grudges… so many days have passed, and at that time, Sui Zhou was merely teasing him, must he remember it like this?

Tang Fan helps him to change and says, “Coming to Gong County, I thought of some materials for the new novel. I’ll write about a man who was born in the wilderness and one day, a demon sets its eyes on a unique treasure that has been passed down for generations in the man’s family. However, he’s troubled by the fact that the treasure recognises its owner and the demon cannot come close to it. And so the demon drinks on the fresh blood of women and turns himself into a beautiful woman, seduces the man and finally makes the man fall irrevocably in love with her, so much so that he willingly gifts the treasure to the demon. The demon’s true form is immediately revealed, the man sees that the person who has slept with him all this time is a horrifying demon filled with scales and has blood-filled eyes, and is scared to death. What do you think?”

Sui Zhou is silent for a bit, “It is rather good.”

But he also has a bad feeling…

As expected, the next moment, he hears Tang Fan say, “How about I call the man Sui Zhou then?”

“Change it,” Sui Zhou replies.

Tang-daren goes with the flow, “Alright, then I’ll call the demon Sui Zhou.”

Sui Zhou, “…”

As people say, one would rather offend a gentleman than offend Tang-daren.

Don’t just judge by Sui Zhou’s unapproachable face, and how he seems cold and ruthless to his subordinates and others. Everyone tends to think that he is so cold that he doesn’t have friends and even when he spends time with his good friend Tang Fan, it is Tang-daren who is always giving in to him.

They do not know that their assumption is wrong, because with Tang-daren, Sui Zhou has this “as long as he is happy anything goes” attitude. Once compromise becomes a habit, he unconsciously keeps giving in, and giving in, and giving in again…

Giving in to the end, and Sui Zhou is defeated and convinced.

And so Tang-daren’s new novel and the name of the demon in it is set, just like that.

As for those from the Northern Administrative Court who will see the book in stores in the future, they will make a noise of confusion, “Zhenfushi-daren’s surname is not common, how did it turn up here? Is the author a man who was arrested and tortured by Sui Zhou before?”

But that is all talk for later. Tang-daren finally can make use of this opportunity when Sui Zhou is weak and via the chance to change his clothes, he unceremoniously bullied the other. He is feeling exceptionally good right now, and hums a small tune under his breath.

Sui Zhou doesn’t know if he is deliberately being like this in front of him, or if he really does not care, and cannot help but ask directly, concerned, “Did you think about what will happen after you return to the imperial city?”

[iam-kenough]

Will  you ever notice me? Arthur Morgan x Original Female Character

Summary:  During they wandering in deep snowstorm, man from van  der Linde gang found odd looking girl and Dutch decides to take her  to  camp to see if she can be any use, leading life of outlaw with them.  Quickly, new girl develops feelings towards Arthur, but he sees her just  as a kid…and she won’t take that! It’s an original character story  that starts in the place where Arthur, Dutch and Micah were supposed to  first meet with Sadie. Instead she’s already with them.  

Authors notes: It’s another chapter and you  can find the rest of chapters on my blog if you want to read more of my  fanfiction. Hope you gonna enjoy it. Word count: 2558 Chapter 9 Arthur woke up and he wasn't ready to open his eyes. Discovering it was all a dream was more than possible and he still wanted to linger on sweet, sweet fantasy. Iris stirred right next to him and he opened her eyes. He was her big spoon as she was sleeping in his arms. Now he reminded himself. He had her not only once but few times since she discovered it's fun. She was hot for him all night and he needed to be proud of himself. He was a real gentelman down here but he couldn't say that eating her out wasn't something amazing. He had never done that before, just knew it's really nice and he almost forgot about it, because Mary was too nice and well-raised to do such things. They usually had sex without any light too. Thinking about all of it made Arthur realise that for the first time in many years he woke up with morning wood. His eyes almost got back to his skull when she stirred again, rubbing her ass against it. He needed to go away. Do something proper. So Arthur decided to have a bath and shave his face while she still slept. He didn't know he wanted to face anyone from camp, but her and for one second he was thinking of running away from here to be alone with Iris. - You ugly bastard - he muttered to himself in the mirror, shaving right after he scrubbed his body making sure he's clean and fresh for what was coming this night. It was before midday and he was already thinking in what position they gonna do it first. He decided he gonna let her choose. - Morning - he heard voice behind his back and small hand caressing his bicep. - Ain't you the sweetest morning girl - he murmured and caressed her arm back. - I've got something for you - she smiled at him shyly - you need to swallow it without any questions - she said as she showed him spoon of something that was green and had strong herbal smell. - What's that? - Arthur asked, his brows rasing. - A medicine - she replied mysteriously - I said you can't ask, cowboy. You still should rest in your bed after what happened to you. - Told him the same as soon as I saw him - said Dutch, sitting near them and lighting up a cigarette. - Are you gonna in bed with me? - Arthur joked which made her blush. - Mr Morgan! - she scolded - just eat it. And drink this! - Iris handed him a cup of gold tea with honey. - And what's that? - he said, his face twisting in disgust when he tasted herbal paste on his tongue - is it also disgusting? - Oh, I can have it if you don't want it, Arthur - Dutch chimed in, knowing what a treat Iris has. - He's gonna drink this down despite the fact liking it, Dutch. It's for his health. Arthur didn't wanna argue about it and he started to drink. It was surprisingly good. - It's tea? - Yes, with honey. Is it good? - It's actually amazing. Never had that before. - Now you gonna have it quite often - Iris patted his head. She still didn't tell him she knew his sick. She decided to surprise him with results rather than promises. - No idea what I did to deserve that but thank you - Arthur smiled at Iris with small sparks in his eyes. Arthur Morgan would never admit he liked when she cared for him, even at the start of their relationship. At first she just shared food with him if she had anything extra and she asked him if he slept good. Now will at that extra care that he gained he felt amazing. He was starving for affection. With that thought he also started smoking a cigarette. - No way, Mister - she said and took it away, putting it out with her shoe. She also grabbed pack from Arthur's hand and quickly hid it behind her back. - Huh? - If I'm gonna see you smoking a cigarette even once again, we gonna have war and I promise that. - Ah, those women, ain't I right, son? One night of sharing bed and they think they own us. - Fuck you, Dutch - she said without any hesitation, causing Arthur to cough. They all knew he did it to cover ugly laughing - you not gonna give him any of those either - Iris's lips became thin, white line immediately. - What is it all about, huh? - Arthur tried to catch up - I feel like I missed something? - Just...just do what I ask you, and Arthur? I just want you stop smoking, drink that and have your medicine everyday. It's not bad thing to ask for after all what happened? Arthur was surprised. He was smoking since he was young, around 20 years now. He thought that it's gonna be difficult to quit, but seeing Iris's face made him to want at least to try. He was sure he haven't tell anyone but Dutch and Hosea about his condition, not even calling it by names but using metaphors and context, so her harsh reactions on him having a cigarette was weird. But she couldn't know. He nodded slowly and seeing sign of relief on her face was a gift. They first sex this night was something else. It wasn't only something new to experience, at least for Iris, but it showed how badly Arthur Morgan fell for her. He realised he wanted to do nothing but that, now, tomorrow and in ten years. Even if it made pervert out of him. First steps were stressful but as soon as Iris got relaxed she showed Arthur her true side. Which was being young, horny woman. Arthur almost doubted he's gonna be enough for her, with his extremely low stamina but at the same time he was oh so happy. It turned him on to know she was getting wet every time he touched her while they were naked. He was nibbling on her neck, on her breasts and on her nipples. It was third time they changed position this night. They started missionary but as soon he found out she's even more frivolous than he could expect, he decided he's gonna give her the most naughty sex he could think of. Iris was riding Arthur's dick, with her eyes shut and mouth open. Her breasts was bouncing, up and down and it was almost hipnotising to him, all he was thinking about now was her fast paces. He couldn't hold himself back and as soon as she started moaning and trembling, having an orgasm he pulled out and wanked himself at her breasts. - Oh God - she moaned. - Jesus- he groaned. Iris fell at his side, landing on her back. It was probably the nicest feeling she didn't know she could feel. - How was I? - she asked, looking at Arthur, as he tried to ease his breathing. - Look at me, darlin' and you gonna know - he leaned on his elbow to look at her. Iris didn't respond, just blushed and covered herself with blanket. - Aren't you a naughty girl, eh? - he whispered in low voice to her ear, causing shivers running down her spine. And from this night it was like this everyday, as soon as they got to bed Arthur did everything to make love to her the best way he could. To devour her. But it wasn't only in bed, he did everything to catch her off guard anytime he could. At some point he was sure there wasn't place they didn't fuck at. His tent, her tent, leaning against the tree or doggy style, bending Iris against rock or a log while they were away from camp to hunt. He was horny as hell and it was new to him to desire someone's body this much. He loved to talk dirty to her ear and calling her hot names muttered under his breath. Iris was caring about him every day, feeding him with herbs, tea with honey and her love. Where he was there was her, to hold on his arm, or caress his cheek. They were finally happy, together and at peace. But life was life, not a fairytale and it all started to fade. As soon as she discovered Arthur's lungs are better now and he doesn't need to be looked after this much it has loosen their ties. Iris also discovered that loving him is hard thing somehow, Arthur didn't like doing nothing much more than sex, he wasn't talking much. Everytime there was a question he wouldn't answer they ended up fucking. At first they were glued to each other and it lasted weeks but soon Arthur started disappearing, not saying about him getting back to bed at night. She reminded herself as he once told her, that life normal person who sleeps everyday in the same place wasn't for him. Iris tied to be considerate. She was aware that this hot romance will become more balanced with time. But then, she remembered about person who tried to make Arthur regular, obedient man. Mary. Something hit her out of the blue to search for clues as she was sitting in Arthur's tent while he was away again. At first it felt really bad to lurk through his belonging and she was looking around if no one will discover it. They wouldn't mind since everyone knew already that Iris Rhiannon and Arthur Morgan were a thing. But it felt bad to do so anyway and being caught red handed. In a wooden frame hidden under his bed was photo of Mary, her portrait. It looked like Arthur had it for a long time but he wasn't keeping it under the bed all the time, it wasn't dusted. It meant he was probably looking at this photograph before his sleep every day and it hurt her a bit. She could understand that although it was hard to understand. But she tried to stay cool and be true to her words which was promise of loving him even if she and Arthur are gonna be only friends. She put the photograph away but then she felt something under her fingertips. A piece of paper? She looked under the bed again and in the darkest corner he discovered an envelope. But not one, it was almost a hundred of them. Letters from Mary to Arthur Morgan. But they could write all of them in the past, right? Deep breath. Arthur probably keeps them to remember his past and that's okay, you not gonna read it, Iris. Another deep breath. Checking one wouldn't hurt anyone, right? Iris picked the one that look the most recent to her, looking at the ink and paper condition. Her heart dropped low and loud as she saw all the words in front of her. He was seeing her. All the time. Arthur even was with Mary right now. But it wouldn't be that bad if he only helped her with few things, however it appeared like he still was her obedient dog. And there was only thing Iris didn't know if she gonna ever forgive. Him lying to her instead of facing consequences as break-up. Anger? No. Fury? Maybe. She couldn't tell. High pitched sound was getting louder and louder, ringing in her ear. Her pupils became bigger, pumped with adrenaline as she threw letters back under his bed. Without any thinking she just grabbed a horse and got away, galloping through the night. Mrs Grimshaw was right telling girls not to wander alone, she was telling it over and over. Gunshot rang in Iris's ears as she looked at her stomach as it become red, flushing down with blood. Someone shot her. Doctor's office smelled like alcohol and formaline. Iris's didn't mind though. It was one of those weird but pleasant smells. Just like smoke or freshly cut grass. - What a time we have to shot and rob a lady, eh? - Person who did that was surely disappointed, doc. They did it for one dollar and fifty cents. But you are right, it's a wild world. Doctor gave her a gaze with a faint smile. - Am I gonna live? I've been shot before but I don't like that look of yours. - You gonna, miss. You had great luck to survive shot considered lethal. - But? - Excuse me? -There is always a but, especially when it comes to human health. So what is mine? - I menaged to make you safe and sound and it gonna heal properly...- man suddenly grabbed her hand - but because of how much blood you lost you couldn't keep the baby.  I don't think you could have any more of them thanks to person who did that to you. A...baby? It felt like doctor was talking to a stranger, not her. You can't have any more of them. It wasn't only the fact she just lost her baby not knowing about being pregnant in first place. She lost ability every woman around her had. Iris was to you to think about children, she never did. But now...It was Arthur's baby and she didn't know she would keep it or if she was able to take reponsibility for it.  But it felt bad. Now she didn't had any good reason for some man to love her in the future. Love...This word was weird. She used it not a long time ago to describe her feelings towards Arthur. Future? Why would anyone be with her in the future? She couldn't imagine it anyway. Not after her first love disappearing just like that. When she was sitting in the camp it seemed like people were talking to her. But she couldn't listen through that ringing in her ears. Her eyes were quite empty too. From that day it was just like that. Like a timelapse. She was sitting, not moving, not eating and life around were going on and on, people were walking around, trying to get to her. But they couldn't. -Iris? Hey! - it was Dutch's voice. It seemed to be far away though. But it wasn't important now. So I walked into the haze And a million dirty waves Now I see you lying there Like a lilo losing air, air Black rocks and the shoreline surf Still dead summer I cannot bear And I wipe the sand from my eyes The Spanish Sahara, the place that you'd wanna Leave the horror here (...)I'm the fury in your head, I'm the fury in your bed, I'm the ghost in the back of your head

[soulvomit]

My reference for counterculture, is what was dying by the 1980s.

I know so many old hippies and old civil rights activists who are activists *now.* But they don’t hang out on Tumblr and talk to young people. Those among them who are living, who stayed active, are still fighting. 

They don’t have the energy to protest anymore. The changing politics, in some cases, may have made some feel unsafe (because so very many old counterculturalists were Jewish. They grew up significantly less privileged than their own offspring would. Many grew up poorer and more adjacent to POC communities than to white ones. There really was a time when the stereotypical Jew was a poor pickle salesman or textile worker.) 

They are invisible to all of you because they are at the polling places. They are at city council meetings, agitating. 20 years ago, they were the STILL the ones organizing our protests. They were the ones running the stores and the coffeehouses that were the locus of underground Gen X life. They ran the tattoo parlors in which the lot of us set up our piercing business in. They had to publish their writings next to porno mags or in magazines that advertised sex businesses. And the oldest of them had to meet in illegal spaces.

And if you are LGBT then your spiritual grandmothers and grandfathers met in basements and mafia-run establishments, and had to constantly evade the police. 

There were a lot of Jews in counterculture and protest culture. Jews of that generation marched for Black causes because they were adjacent communities. They were often redlined into the same neighborhoods. Adjacence doesn’t mean you are best friends. It means you have the same enemies. 

Counterculture people in general were counterculture BECAUSE they were marginalized, they were not marginalized because they were counterculture.

They were not rich. They were not affluent hipsters with tattoos, they were not middle class Hot Topic teens with anime backpacks. They often went to jail. The older of them were poorer still and often died of that poverty. The POC among them often died or went to jail. 

They were often disabled. They were often mentally ill. Their lives were often hard. Many of them were very educated, because you can come from a family that avails you of that and STILL end up a marginalized outcast. So we have the image of the well-spoken counterculturalist who is simply weird and has dropped out of society. A lot did not drop out of society. Society kicked them out.

They were often neurodivergent. There were no words for this back then. There were simply histories of institutionalization for misdiagnosed mental health conditions.

My mother (born 1952) grew up a poor Jew in Venice, California. Venice started off with poor Black people redlined into what was the region’s most undesirable area, poor Dustbowl survivors, and poor, elderly Jews who had also been redlined into the area. Venice was where poor people lived. Police were *everyone’s* enemy and you didn’t call the cops on your neighbors unless absolutely necessary. Little good ever came of calling the cops. Don’t shit where you eat, and all.

This was when the beaches were considered dirty and violent and you didn’t, as a respectable person, go down by the docks. 

This was when the “Dream of the Suburbs” was fed in a steady diet to the white middle class and normified as the American Dream, feeding people a picture of a perfect squeaky-clean white Protestant family consisting of a sexless couple and 2.5 perfect white Protestant children, spoon-fed into your brain holes by Hayes Code television. You watched them on TV but didn’t know about the abuse, the institutionalization of girl children for being intelligent, the utter fucking racism, or House Un-American Affairs Committee which branded ANYONE who agitated on behalf of their own cause, a dangerous enemy of the state. Even modern Tankies have no frame of reference for “Commie” actually being a life-destroying label.

This was when LGBTQ people were just “sexual deviants.” When neurodiverse people were simply institutionalized. When disabled people often couldn’t even eat in public.

This was when being “weird” or a “freak” meant actual, real, and utter social marginalization.  

This was when artists were imagined to be poor people. (The reality being that so many artists were poor or outcast first, and trying to do what they could to get by, and that happened to be their art.)

Being almost any kind of outcast, and surviving it, meant you were where the other outcasts were and trying to create something for yourselves. There was not ADA. There was not PFLAG. There were not support groups. There was no mainstream media inclusivity. When my mom was growing up, the perfect white upper middle class family was the only thing on TV. This is a cultural context in which a lot of us nerds, became such huge Star Trek fans. For many of us, this was the first thing on TV that really spoke to us. It was one of the first things on TV that people shared with their children that didn’t blare Hayes Code and fascist imagery at us. 

There was only barely community women’s health and it was even more radical then. 

My mother’s family moved to Venice not because it was a gentrified hipstertopia. It would not be that for a long time. My mother (born 1952) grew up poor and Jewish in Venice. Venice was nowhere. Venice was nothing. Venice was to Los Angeles what Antioch, CA is to San Francisco: somewhere way off in the middle of nowhere where no one who "matters" ever goes, where a lot of minorities and outcasts lived because of being unable to live anywhere else. 

Venice was a shithole. The city wouldn’t keep the canals clean. The only infrastructure the PTB at all cared about, was the notoriously racist, fascist local police force.

Lots of people wanted to leave. I’m sure they would have wished to leave on their own terms instead of being pushed out by love-bead wearing trustafarian 20 year olds with garage bands, who 20 years later would sell their homes to Bourgeoise Bohemians, who would then be replaced by Tech Bros.

Once Venice was wedged against the ocean on the dregs of a failed resort (of some developer who wanted to build a mock Venice, Italy earlier in the century), and separated from Los Angeles by smelly salt flats and marshes.

Now, the town that birthed The Doors in one of its canalside garages, has been swallowed by Los Angeles. 

It is often called Silicon Beach.

That disappeared world is what I think of, when I think of “counterculture.” The more privilege-originated people in that mix were a mix of people who themselves were actually and genuinely oppressed by HUAC, and by abusive and narcissistic parents totally supported by the old system and the mainstream culture. 

But not all of them disappeared.

Anyone who actually was there for the fight, stayed with the fight. A couple of the old “Boomers” I see at Indivisible meetings and agitating at City Council meetings, are former Civil Rights activists.

When the Left Puritans and the Right Puritans have divided up the US between them, where will you go? When you’re finished being chased off of Tumblr and YouTube, where will you go? When mass surveillance turns all electronic spaces to the equivalent environment of a hospital, public school, Federal building?

Our parents and grandparents, literal and figurative, didn’t have Tumblr. They did not have Leftbook. 

I hope that this did not seem as if I were romanticizing a cultural environment I know nothing about. There is nothing I would ever give to live in the 1960s and 70s. And I feel like the culture has made so many strides since then.

But this is the mental picture I have of “counterculture.” 

It was counter culture. Counterculture was a radicalized label that was a synonym for anti-American. It was not middle class mall subculture. You could not buy it at Hot Topic. 

[lightsandlostbells]

Skam Italia episode 7 reaction

Edoardo: looking good just by comparison.

Clip 1 - A sandwich and a spoon

This is not a substantial comment but Silvia’s sandwich made me hungry.

So Silvia made out with the famous Rocco Martucci? That was the guy eyeballing her? I guess since we got a visual, he can’t be Italian Julian Dahl.

If I didn’t know better from having seen where the storyline goes, I’d say Silvia does a fairly convincing job of acting like she doesn’t care about Edoardo. You know, except for the part where she’s already making travel plans to accompany them on their vacation.

Lmao, Silvia and Eleonora allowed this spoon sucking to go on when Martino was right there in their faces. I appreciated how awkward this scenario was and that like, none of them attempted to make small talk to distract from Fede’s innuendo.

Clip 2 - Skate park

That skate park looks fun. It kinda looks like a swimming pool that was converted into something else, based on the colors, but I’m assuming it was always a skate park. But on that note, the visuals and colors of Skam Italia are usually great. I’m not going to do an in-depth analysis at the moment but it seems like the majority of scenes are very warm with a lot of brown/orange/yellow, and sometimes they do a scene that sticks out to me because it’s so cool and blue. It’s all rather striking. And of all the remakes, this one is making the most of its setting (Skam Austin is doing some things with the city but I feel way more of a sense of place in Skam Italia than Druck or Skam France).

I like when the Isak character prods Eva a little to tell him what’s up, since I think it fits what Isak is about to do to her in a few scenes, and because I always wonder why Eva didn’t just tell Noora if she was feel guilty - it helps to have the prompt from Isak to get out her confession. That being said, Eva and Martino’s relationship has been established as close and comfortable on its own merits that I can certainly buy Eva opening up to him. They’ve put in the work to make them have a rapport.

Lmao, Martino making that hand motion about Fede and her spoon. Thanks for the S3 teaser!

Tiny thing but when Eva swallows out of anxiety, you can see Martino half out of frame swallow right after she does, like he’s got some conflict on his own. That might not even be a conscious choice but it’s a good acting detail nonetheless. I think I mentioned previously that these actors have known each other for years and it’s stuff like that, the mimicry and feeding off each other, which makes the chemistry more convincing.

Yeah, this is my favorite Eva-Isak friendship after the original by far, so it’s really going to sting when the reveal happens.

Clip 3 - The wall

I’m glad that Eleonora checked in whether Edoardo wrote back to Silvia before she snapped her back to reality. You know, just in case he did.

Also in this scene Silvia still seems stuck in Edoardoland and firmly convinced that he’s into her, whereas I remember Vilde seeming a little deflated and knowing that Noora would not approve of her talking about William when she entered the scene. She’s pretty good at putting up a confident front when she needs to.

I think Silvia’s hooking up with Rocco Martucci was a misguided attempt to make Edoardo jealous and get him back, which is too bad. I wish she was legit trying to have fun or move on. I know for plot reasons that’s not how it goes, but still.

Both Eleonora and Eva were very sweet to Silvia and not too harsh or judgmental.

I really love making it into a wall of conquests instead of the sweatshirts, and I appreciate that Silvia gets to save face a little bit since the sweatshirt is a public “I fucked Edoardo” marker but the wall gets to preserve her anonymity and (some of) her dignity while still communicating that the boys think of the girls as trophies. But I almost hate it, because now I need that scene where the girls paint over or draw or deface the wall in some way, and I don’t think I’ll get it. Give me that thing, Skam Italia! 

For a minute I thought Eva was going to pull out a marker or something and draw over the chart. 

Based off the wall, Rocco Martucci sure has been busy.

Clip 4 - Eva on the phone with “mom”

Federico roleplaying as Eva’s mom toward the end of that phone conversation … I’ve never been a huge fan of P-Chris or any version of this character but this is a detail I often forget and I have no idea why, it’s one of the best things he ever did.

Gio deserves all the roasting he can get about his weed use. It’s nice that he’s being honest about having weed on him, but like … she’s made it clear he behaves like an asshole when he’s high, and that this isn’t some vague ideological problem for her but something based on his past behavior. So some of the banter is cute and all but him offering her some pot, even in a joking way, annoys me more than it should with this dynamic in mind. Dammit, Gio.

Clip 5 - Eleonora goes in on Edoardo

Silvia opening with some random mundane topics was kind of cute - either a bit clueless and rambling, much like her many many texts to the girls, or you can also take away that she was building up to the big news and trying to psych herself up.

I’m glad Eva called Sana on the dignity comment since that always seemed like one of the least necessary Sana comments about Vilde, particularly in this context, and probably just egged her on to confront him.

Silvia didn’t need any convincing from the girls whereas Noora was encouraging Vilde in the other versions. Silvia is dead set on it.

I like how they built up to it with the catchy music that cuts out as Edoardo bursts Silvia’s confidence bubble.

Sooo … Edoardo is still a dick, but maybe less of a dick that William? Who knew?

He still does the fake forgetting Silvia’s name, and his comment about the wall is outright lying but not as personal of an attack. He does laugh more at her which is a dick move, especially in front of his crew. However, he doesn’t tell her she isn’t worth it.

“What were you doing behind the boys’ toilets?” I’m assuming he’s insinuating that she’s a slut? That’s horrible and Edoardo is a creep, but I also have less of a fuuuuuuck youuuuuuu feeling toward him. Because the whole thing about Vilde not being worth it/not being pretty enough plays directly into Vilde’s worst insecurities and body image. And we’ve seen that Silvia has the body image issues as evidenced by her picking at her sandwich. I’m not positive that Silvia has the same hangups about being labeled a slut? She has the hesitation to go upstairs with Eduardo and you could interpret that as fear of her reputation, but she’s also down to make out with Rocco Martucci and stresses that she wanted to.

So while I want to make it clear, Edoardo is being an asshole, and being called a slut is hurtful and misogynistic … I actually will find this easier to forgive than William’s comments. I mean it mostly depends on how Edoardo reacts in future episodes, whether he regrets it or not, how it all plays out, but so far he doesn’t have as high of a hurdle in getting me to like him. Like how is Edoardo going to justify his comments the same way in S2 when Eleonora calls him on it? It’s not the same context. (And again: NOT excusing slut-shaming but I think there may be a difference in terms of how someone with poor self-image might perceive this comment, because “slut” is an insult dependent on behavior, vs. telling someone they aren’t pretty enough which is perceived as a more inherent, unchangeable characteristic. But again, William’s comment directly feeds into Vilde’s ED; how will Edoardo’s comment affect Silvia on a similar level? “Slut” doesn’t have much to do with an ED, at least not in an obvious way.)

Lmao, I feel kinda gross writing anything vaguely positive about Edoardo in this scene, since “not as much of a dick as he could have been” is not a ringing endorsement, but since this incident is a huge roadblock in me liking William in the original version, it’s worth talking about.  

This was also the best version of this roasting in the remakes. Eleonora has the attitude to back up her comments, and Edoardo has some personality in how he responds to her. 

Love that Eleonora got in her comment about his stupid hair as a last dig, but also, Edoardo has the best hair of any of the Williams, IMO.

Clip 6 - Fight

Gio opens his mouth so much for the kisses, damn. I’m not knocking him, I would rather see enthusiastic kisses than a bunch of pathetic pecks, but the dude is like Pac-Man.

Um that bit about the teacher siding with Alice over Federico and making him run laps is really funny, but you can see why it would alarm Eva, because she realizes she’s on the side of the bad guy in this situation. Would the teacher side with Alice against Eva, too?

The fight was brutal! All the girls jumped in to protect Eva. Sana went in with the dictionary, Silvia with the backpack. Eleonora is straight-up snarling by the end. Eva wasn’t even fighting after a certain point, just standing back as her girls defended her. The most heartwarming brawl of all time.

General Comments:

How does Skam Italia have the worst Jonas (outside of Marlon from Skam Austin) and the best William? How?

Listen, I am really not expecting to love Eleonora/Edoardo or Edoardo himself. It’s not a relationship type I’m fond of, he’s not a character archetype I enjoy. But if they can eliminate the worst of his behavior and modify certain actions ... then I can be fine with him and with the ship. I am being very, very hesitant to assume Skam Italia will make enough radical changes just because they did a few things that weren’t as bad; however, I am willing to give it a chance. 

It’s kind of funny because there was a rumor going around that they’ll jump to Martino’s story in S2 instead of Eleonora’s and lmao, not sure how legit that is but of course they would do it for the one remake where I hate the William the least. Not that I’m objecting to the gay storyline getting the spotlight sooner, though I do wonder how they will adapt certain plot elements without the buildup (Eskild’s S2 introduction, Isak’s background storyline of dating Sara and living in the basement).

Skam Italia seems by far the most popular and well-liked of the European remakes, which I can quite understand. Skam France is too much of a copy without much of an individual personality and Druck, though I’ve liked many of the scenes and characters, has a lot of hiccups in terms of production and updates, which is unfortunately turning people off and making the show less accessible. Not to repeat myself too much but: I have some big gripes about Skam Italia but it’s for the most part consistent, is nicely made with beautiful locations and nice cinematography, and has integrated the local culture well, putting its own spin on the material and not being a direct copy. None of the actors have really wowed me so far but there are some likable personalities in the bunch. My hope is that they will keep it up and either improve on the Eleonora/Edoardo relationship, or do a respectful job of Martino’s story, depending on what S2 is. (Even though I don’t want them to attempt Evak 2.0 at all ... but that’s a larger topic.)

I’m not Italian so if I misunderstood or missed something, feel free to correct me. 

If you got this far, thank you for reading!

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘Return to Sender’ (S03E16) Analysis

With what feels like two separate stories slammed together in this episode, it was never going to be my favorite.  And though we have some tasty meta, I was left feeling a bit disappointed, and more than a bit confused on several points.  Come on in to hear what I think about ‘Return to Sender’.

It was inevitable that, after the extreme high water mark that has been the first part of season 3 (the initial bloc of episodes contained some of the strongest material to date from the show, in my opinion), having an episode that really didn’t land for me was inevitable, and would inevitably feel jarring.  That was ‘Return to Sender’, which felt like two good episodes both trimmed way down and slammed together.  It was the same problem I had with ‘Section 31’ last season.  There were several stories in that one, all potentially promising, and all severely undernourished to the point of not being memorable at all.  

‘Return to Sender’ only has two such stories, but they still have that distinct feeling of not being long enough to realize their full potential.  Both feel important.  Both feel like they have a lot to say, both about the plot and about where Sims is as a character right now.  So it’s a real shame that the whole thing feels rushed, and major beats fly by without being given the weight I felt like they deserved.

I’ll talk about the two separately first, and I’ll dig into what meta we can glean.  Then I’ll talk about why the episode, when taken as a whole, didn’t really work for me.  

The first story, which seemed to work better for me, involves Jon going to investigate the previous location of Breekon & Hope.  We find out that Breekon & Hope was the name of the company before the delivery men we know took it off the former owner and took the names for themselves.  We also know that they are all but confirmed to have been the two strong-men from the Circus of the Other.  Given that, their purpose, which had seemed to me to be a bit more freelance, is actually to move important artifacts around in service of the Stranger.  

As Sims himself mentioned in this part, it’s a bit light on meta, but understandably.  I never thought Breekon & Hope were going to be wealths of information, being more ferrymen than players in the game.  Why he felt so hellbent to find their story, I’m not sure, though I figure it’s the Archivist driving him on, making him desperate for any new story.

Indeed, the real intrigue in the first part is Sims’ reaction to standing in this location where someone died, having collected the statement from where Elias left it for him. He himself is bothered by the notion that the death seems inconsequential to him, that his major irritation comes from Elias being a showy prick, rather than the fact that a man struggled and died in that place.  Sims sounds more like Gertrude in this part of the episode than he ever has before, and following on the heels of me dubbing him Head Asshole of the Magnus Institute last week for not even bothering to check in with Martin and the rest of the assistants, this seems properly worrisome.  His humanity seems to be slipping away at an accelerated rate, and he’s not even trying to hold onto it.

So, yes, the story was a bit light on meta, but it was a good story, and well told.  It was nice to hear Jon read a statement again.  It was interesting to see him realizing how quickly the Archivist is eclipsing Jonathan Sims.  Spooled out a bit, maybe with a confrontation with Elias or something, and I think that this would have been a really good episode.

But instead, brace yourself for whiplash, because we transition directly into the second story. These two are nominally tied together with the log book Jon found at Breekon & Hope, which has allowed him to track the shipments of the Stranger’s packages.  This, again, would be a really interesting idea.  Concluding the Breekon & Hope episode with the idea that he’s going to start using that book to trach these packages would have been a good hook.  

Instead, we hard cut to him at the taxidermy shop from ‘Still Life’, apparently working without any sort of fuss or fear with Daisy.  Um, what? I don’t expect this show to hand-hold me or spoon-feed me information.  Far from it.  But a bit of context is always a good thing.  How long is this segment after the former one?  Does Jon have Daisy’s number in his phone?  Did he contact Elias, who sent Daisy to pick him up?  Is this the first time they’ve worked together? Certainly they seem weirdly comfortable in one another’s company all of a sudden, which is quite the change from Daisy wanting to shoot him in the face.  Also there was no mention at all of Basira, like Daisy asking after her and Jon not having an answer because he hasn’t bothered to check on Basira since she was taken hostage?  That would have been an ideal conversation for these two to have.

But, no.  Sudden jump to them confronting Sarah Baldwin, and I feel really bad for that character.  Having her shoehorned into the end of this episode after some great buildup early in the series feels like a disservice.  I’m hoping we get more of her later to let her shine, because this came and went too fast to leave any sort of notion who she is now or what the Anglerfish’s thing might be.  

We’re also missing the bridge between Sims being at least concerned with his slipping humanity in a rather detached way, and the stone cold Sims we get in this latter half.  He’s shaking off any threat Daisy might pose, and the only time he broke his cool was at the mention of Sasha.  He didn’t seem to mind that Sarah Baldwin escaped, nor was he shocked.  He’d got her statement, the story, and that was all that mattered.  The hunger for information was good, but needed room to breathe in the middle of everything else happening.  

And we’re also introduced to the taxidermy skin from ‘Still Life’ again.  Apparently it’s a critical piece of the Unknowing, and to slow that down Gertrude had murdered the former owner of the shop and stolen the skin. And then, in a move that felt more like Jonathan Sims, idiot extraordinaire, than anything else in that latter half of the episode, Sims just out and out admits he has no idea where the skin is.  Sarah bolts, ready to tell the Stranger that the new Archivist is a moron, and that’s that.

Like I said before, each of these halves could have been a really good episode unto itself.  The first would have been a quieter episode, but I could have dug that.  The latter would have been fairly fraught, but Jon actively interrogating a being—not asking for a statement, but a proper interrogation—would have been a really cool thing to explore over 20 minutes.  Jon and Daisy having to uncomfortably work with one another would have been interesting.  Giving Sarah Baldwin more time to draw out the creepiness of the Anglerfish, still one of the most frightening entities from this series, would have been phenomenal.

Instead, everything felt like it was rushed, and all the story threads got the short shrift in order to pack them in.  I think that both parts of this were probably necessary, and maybe the numbering of the episodes just didn’t work for them to be two episodes and still get to the mid-season finale on episode 20 of this season.  But I really wish they had found a way.

I don’t want to make it sound like there was nothing good here.  Though it was rushed, I now imagine that the Stranger’s efforts to retrieve the skin are going to lie at the center of the mid-season finale.  I also think that Jon doesn’t yet realize how dangerous that information is.  If I can figure that out, you bet that Nichola Orsinov can.  And you bet she’ll be sending some visitors to the Archives to retrieve that skin.

And the assistants STILL don’t know anything, what with Jon apparently now partered with fucking Daisy of all people.  Without the key information about the Unknowing and the Stranger, the assistants don’t know not to help some envoy of the Stranger.  They don’t know not to let someone from the circus in.  And Nichola would almost certainly view killing them all as an added fuck-you to the Beholding, so you know she’d do it if she could.  And even if Elias could stop any direct incursions by the Stranger, what if the Stranger were to approach someone like Tim?  What if Nichola were to offer Tim freedom in exchange for a creepy old bit of taxidermy skin?  He’d go for it in a second.

And speaking of Elias, we also have the most interesting line of the episode from Sarah Baldwin: “Is that what he’s calling himself now?”  This, alone, was the one line I’m happy they breezed past.  It was the one beat that didn’t feel rushed, because it should be something that spools out over many episodes.  So as far as pacing goes, that beat did land really well for me.

It seems pretty clear that whoever Elias Bouchard was before, the thing wearing his body is at least no longer him in entirety.  There likely was the original stoner Elias, but he was either replaced by someone else or willingly took on the mantle of something else, making him a hybrid of his own personality and that of something else.  And honestly, I have to wonder if that personality isn’t Jonah Magnus. What if the founder of the Institute found a way to pass from body to body, either completely consuming or living in symbiosis with the current head of the Institute?  It would lend a lot more weight to Elias’ arrogance so far, if he was the beating heart of the Magnus Institute by literally being the beating heart keeping Magnus alive.  And when he dies, he would pass into the next head of the Institute. When he said that killing him would kill everyone there, he wasn’t talking about the body of Elias, perhaps, but the mind of Jonah Magnus.

Or at least that’s the theory I’m running with.  It’s by far the most interesting meta coming out of this episode, as Elias continues to be one of the most intriguing aspects of season 3, even when he isn’t there.

But whoever Elias truly is, I get the feeling that he’s not as in control as he thinks.  He loves playing games, proving how observant he is to Jon.  He wants Jon afraid and impressed.  But Jon’s getting a bit sick of it, and the one thing Elias really can’t seem to control is Jon’s bad decision train.  And that train feels like it’s about to come into station.  Jon’s diminishing humanity is something Elias is clearly pushing, but I don’t think it’s nearly as good a thing as Elias imagines it to be.  It’s endangering his assistants, and rather than using them as touchstones and ways to cling to whatever sympathy and caring he has left in him, he’s running around with Daisy, who isn’t exactly a boost to anyone’s humanity.  And without the emotional connection, he’s clearly missing obvious conclusions.  He’s too focused on the story, and not enough on the people.  

As we come up hard toward the mid-season break (which will follow episode 20 of season 3, for anyone who didn’t know yet), I get the feeling they’re going to leave us with either a cliffhanger or a real shakeup of the current situation.  We know that the first half of this season has been Jon going out and trying to be proactive.  He’s letting the notion that he’s supposed to save the world go to his head. He’s drifting further away from caring about others and falling further and further into the hunger for information. He’s becoming Elias’ sort of Archivist, and I don’t think that’s going to work out well.

Conclusions

Like I said, this felt like about half of two good episodes accidentally put in a tumble dryer together. We get the first half, which explores Breekon & Hope and Jon’s ever-diminishing humanity, and we have the latter half in which Jon is somehow working with Daisy, who is apparently cool with that now.  And Sarah Baldwin is there.  And she gets away to tell the Stranger that the new Archivist has no clue what his predecessor did with the skin that’s critical to the Unknowing.  So a lot happens in a rather disjointed manner, leaving me feeling unsatisfied.  The informational bits we got were good, sure, but lacking in context and grounding. Too much happened too quickly with too little reason to string it all together.  And to waste a character like Sarah Baldwin on what amounted to a cameo feels like a damn shame.

I know these episodes can’t all be to my taste, and that’s fine.  Really, it’s a testament to the high quality of this series that an episode like this, where my problems stem from writing decisions rather than character actions, feels so jarring to me.  I’m guessing this was a one-off thing, made necessary by getting all this information out by the mid-season finale.  I’ve very little doubt that next week we’ll be back on track, and I’ll be loving every minute.

Hopefully Jon, as a character, gets his head out of his ass in time to realize what he’s just done. I want to believe that he’s at least smart enough to realize that the Stranger is going to believe that skin is at the Archives, and will likely either try to infiltrate or attack it directly. It would be nice if Sims remembered that there are people at the Archive that he might remember as being friendly with him at some point.  

And Jon needs those people, because without them his humanity is slipping away fast.  So valuing them and keeping them informed? Sort of a thing he has to start doing if he’s going to be this dumb on the regular.

[robbiejohnsonyr3ax3021]

University - Animation Exercises - Character Turn Around

So far in semester 2 for Animation exercises we have  been learning how to draw in 3D and animate with said 3D drawings, as well as learning the concepts of walk cycles whether it be a drawn or rigged walk cycle. To me our latest piece the “Character Turn Around” had in some way featured an aspect of everything we had done so far. Which left me feeling in this strange state of feeling good from learning a lot, but at the same time, feeling incomplete like I’d done something wrong or something was missing? In this post I will explain my creation process over this 5 week long project.

The Creation of my Character

Although this project officially began on the 2nd of March, for me it began on the 24th of February. We had to come to the following week’s lesson with a character we would turn around. This would prove challenging as this would be my first go at drawing in 3D on a PC with no reference. We had done perspective drawing for shadows and distance of objects in the past for AX1111, but never a full 3D design for an original character, so this would prove challenging for me. After three days of drawing and trying to open my mind to a 3D space, I had created my character. Inspired by both my grand parents baking and the video game character Dr Neo Cortex, who I had briefly used as a reference for research for my E4 Project (AX1011), I created a funnel, with a rectangular body and short stumpy legs it’s key characteristic was his comically large head and head popping out from inside his head.

First Character design

Filter

Dr Neo Cortex Character

When the 2nd of March arrived I was feeling good about having everything ready to go, however everything became halted when the lesson began. Our tutor was explaining how it is best if your characters height and body proportions are three heads high. Since my character was mostly all head and small body, I felt I had to go back to the drawing board and tweak the design. Later that day, I contacted my tutor and asked him if he thought the design was acceptable for me to use. We discussed the design for around 15 minutes and he advised me to re think the design to include more features that stick out other than the hair.

After staring at my design for about half an hour, I decided to start over not feeling happy with the design or knowing what else to do with it. The next character was inspired by an accident I had, I was carrying through a cup of tea for my parents and burnt my hands when some spilt on the handle. It was at this moment of shock, I realised the handle sticking out from the cup reminded me of a nose and I came up with the idea to make my character a cup, it was only until I began sketching that i realised that there is an animated video game with a character called “Cuphead” which was identical for what I was going for. The last thing I ever wanted to do was copy something that already exists knowingly, so I back peddled to the source of the tea being a kettle which water is poured from into a cup or a tea pot.

Cuphead

Creating the Teapot Character

It was from here I decided to make my character a tea pot with its handle as a large inconvenient nose and the spout as a sort of pony tail/ hair. I sketched the design and asked my tutor again the next week on his opinion of the design was and if it was any better. He explained its a step in the right direction and noted he liked me making the handle the nose as most people would make the spout the nose (It was a different approach in design), however the character didn’t look like a teapot and more like a cooking pan. After the call I searched on the internet for teapots picked one and tried to draw it, the only issue was most images where a side view of the teapot and none from the handle which, made it difficult for me to visualise.

Second Character Design

Third Character Design

I contact the tutor again the same day with an updated design, again he thought it was getting there but some angles in the design weren’t quite right, he directed me to a website called “Sketchfab”. A website where people upload 3D models of objects and viewers can rotate around them and oddly enough I don’t own a Teapot so this was perfect and will likely refer back to this website for future projects. Anyway I realised and facepalmed myself upon realising the base shape of a teapot doesn’t change when rotating, only the spout an handle changed shape and position.

Once this was made apparent to me  I spent the rest of the week refining the design, one other comment my tutor made in his feed back was try and make the characters T-shirt stand out, so I decided to make most of the body Twa related. So I made a square teabag the body/ T-shirt and the legs & feet two bent tea spoons. The arms where a mixture of these little stirs i would have to hand out at my old job, but made them silver instead of brown to match with the rest of the limbs and body parts. Lastly as an additional feature to stick out of the design I added a stringed label/ tag that can be found on some tea bag brands.

Animating the Turn Around

Now that the character design was finalised, I was worried about time, for a 4 week long project, I had spent two and an half of those weeks (Plus one more for the very first design) trying get the design right without beginning to  learn and refine the techniques of animating. So I hit the ground running make this turn around top priority. I began by drawing the 8 eight key positions for the character, starting with the 3 quarte turn and rotating clockwise from there. I created with two roughs in shades of blue then did the final rough in black.

Using the Onion skin tool and following the Power Point provided to us on Blackboard, I drew the 8 key positions and made sure each section of the body was roughly one head in length. I copied the head and placed it to the side using Shift + Left arrow, in case I made a mistake with the head, I could easily replace it. When these 8 key positions where placed, I showed my tutor my current work, the feedback stated that I was doing OK, but the legs and feet kept growing and shrinking, changing length proportion.

At the time I was aware of this issue, but was not too sure how to resolve the issue. But, with only one week until the hand in date, I couldn’t wait around for answers, so I carried on inbetweening each key position to one another, again following the instructions on the power point. It did take me a day or two to understand how to use the “Shift and Trace” technique effectively, but I feel I had grasped a somewhat of an understanding of the method. Once this was done, I cleaned up any over laying lines and focused on the feet, as I noticed when i tried erasing all the feet, the legs never really changed size it was only the feet.

(Me Erasing overlapping/ additional lines)

It took me roughly three to four days to figure out how to remedy this, I tried many things such as adjusting the scale of the feet, tweaking the legs to accommodate the feet and giving the feet a bit more depth. However, it wasn’t until I placed two guidelines for the feet and drew the feet in-between each line that the changing size problem wasn’t as bad as it was, it was still there, but not as bad as it once was.

Final touch ups

Now that everything was finished, added two extra layers for the tea bad and tea grains and another layer for the netting which holds the tea inside. I coloured those in and the rest of the design and uploaded the work as a “Ver 1″, this was followed up two days later with “Ver 2″ where I had cleaned up some of the lines, overlaying colours and fixed the tag/ label on the characters back to look less jumpy (changing positions each frame).

Conclusion

Overall, in a sense this was the project I was anticipating to happen, where it ticks all the boxes of things to do I was worried about before starting on the course. And now I’m at the end of the project, like at the start of this post I’m both happy as I feel like I learned a lot, but I still feel that I need to refine these skills. Like the previously mentioned Shift + trace as I feel I will need to practice this in the future to become better equated with it. Also small details such as the netting shifting positions, mainly due to time constraints and trying to create depth for both the front netting and side netting (on the body).

When something like this appears again, I’m curious to see how it goes, now knowing the difficulties I may face and knowing how to overcome some of them better.

Additional/ Unused Screenshots

For the first three images, the context for them is my tutor, suggested as a way to help me understand leg rotation and body rotation, I could try sticking two pencils to some blue tack and rotate the blue tack from the spine of the model.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any pencils on me at the time so I used three small wooden barbecue skewers. However due to this, I wasn’t sure if this would work, so I created the teabag body and spoon legs/ feet and stuck them together with white Tack.

[wcharaf]

He is an Iranian musician from Italy, living and working in London.  He was playing all kind of music from around the world during our dinner me and Walid at the Rose Garden restaurant, located in the London Elizabeth Hotel, right across from the Italian Fountains entrance of Hyde park.  The food was delicious, and we were the last customers of the restaurant that night.

The waitress is from Lithuania, and the people eating next to us were from Turkey.  London is gorgeous in its diversity.

Next day, the promised foul (pronounced foooooool in Arabic) plate was awaiting us on Edgware road.  We grabbed our coffee from the Italian Fountain cafe and walked through Central Park to Edgware road, a major road that has its origins as a Roman road and runs 10 miles in a perfect straight line.  The southernmost part of the road is noted for its distinct Middle Eastern flavour.  Many Lebanese and Egyptian restaurants, hookah cafes, and Arab themed nightclubs line the street.  The Odeon cinema, once the location of the biggest screen in London, often now shows films in Arabic.

Multiple avenues and neighborhoods in London dominated by Arabic multicultural market. . #wissamlondontrip2017 #london #visitlondon #lovelondon #ilovelondon #london4all #london🇬🇧 #londoner #londonstyle #londonlife #london2017 #edgware

A post shared by Wissam Charafeddine (@wcharaf) on Apr 8, 2017 at 3:06am PDT

There were many choices, but asking around at the best place to eat foul at, we were directed to AlShishawi restaurant.  An Egyptian owned restaurant, but serves all kind of food.  It is nicely decorated in arabesque and wood work of Egypt.  We sat out side and chose couple plates of lebanese style foul, then added some shawarma that looked so fresh and delicious to skip.  Nothing is like a clear cup of tea and the sound of the spoon stirring the sugar.  It brings so much memories of childhood.  What I enjoyed more than the authentic food, is the happiness of Walid, who has been deprived from such dish in Liverpool, since he left Lebanon.

#wissamlondontrip2017 #london #visitlondon #lovelondon #ilovelondon #london4all #london🇬🇧 #londoner #londonstyle #londonlife #london2017 #edgware

A post shared by Wissam Charafeddine (@wcharaf) on Apr 8, 2017 at 3:25am PDT

Walid’s battery was dying, and while he tried to decipher the crooks from the honest salesmen of Edgware Road shopts to buy a new battery, I was in contact with Sheik Ahmad Alkatib to meet.  Ahmad Alkatib is a former scholar, and current thinker, author, and reformer, originally from Iraq, and lived in several countries.  His reform theories are aligned to IRSHAD and we consider ourselves fighting the same fight for Islamic reform.  He has published 10’s of books and currently very active on Facebook, with two live sessions a day!

With Sheik Ahmad Alkatib in London #irshadonline @irshadonline . #wissamlondontrip2017 #london #visitlondon #lovelondon #ilovelondon #london4all #london🇬🇧 #londoner #londonstyle #londonlife #london2017 #irshadonlinenews

A post shared by Wissam Charafeddine (@wcharaf) on Apr 8, 2017 at 7:48am PDT

We met Sheik Ahmad Alkatib and walked with him to Starbucks on Edgware, then we went with him through the tube, which I wanted to experience before leaving London, to another area, called Queensway, which had multiple Arabic books stores.  He showed us a new book he published.  We visited Al Saqi Book Store on Westbourne Grove, which is one of the most popular Arabic book stores in that area.

A street filled with Arabic book stores. . #wissamlondontrip2017 #london #visitlondon #lovelondon #ilovelondon #london4all #london🇬🇧 #londoner #londonstyle #londonlife #london2017 #arabicbooks

A post shared by Wissam Charafeddine (@wcharaf) on Apr 8, 2017 at 7:45am PDT

We said good bye to him there, and stayed a little looking for a book.  Could not find the right book to read, or actually did not know what to look for.  My education in Arabic language has been islamized by my Islamic studies, so I rarely read Arabic books outside the religious context.  The Hawzah (Islamic Seminary studies institution) did not encourage or at least did not facilitate reading books outside the circle of the same school of thought.  I was lost in the biggest book store there.  I decided to ask Walid.  Walid really had no suggestion for me.  He said none of these he would recommend.  I called my friend Mohamad Fahos from Lebanon using WhatsApp, and asked him.  He recommended few classical which I could not find.  The books also were very expensive.  I ended up buying 1 book just so I would not regret having a book from a such a rich library.  Yet it was unfortunate that nothing attracted me.  That is part of the severe lack of literature problem in the Arabic world.  Basically, nobody writes anymore, and those that write don’t publish, and those who publish don’t make money out of their publication.  There are no incentive to publish unless you want to feed the spiders living on the book shelves of the deserted Arab book stores and libraries.

In addition, the books were very expensive.  12 to 20 pounds per book.  Almost double the price of the English similar books.  After placing 5 books on the table for the guy to calculate a price for me, the price was about 70 pounds.  I offered him 50 pounds.  He said take them all for free since you are breaking me anyway, angrily!  I was embarrassed by his statement, but could not just put that investment into these books knowing that they will be available online soon, and they are probably not worth the money to tell you the truth. I returned them all but one, that I paid for 12 pounds and left.

I stopped for a gelato bite at Snowflake Luxury Gelato.  How can you resist a luxury Gelato!  Then we stopped at Arro Coffee for a pour on coffee experience.  I asked the blonde barista to tell my friend Walid all about the pour on coffee.  She was from Italy.  She asked us where are we from, and Walid answered from Lebanon and my friend is from the US.  She right away turned to me and smiled and said “Nice to Meet You!” Without looking back at Walid.  Me and Walid noticed the obvious differentiation in treatment between us upon declaring our citizenships, and it was funny to us.

Italian espressos every where … most authentic coffee and patisseries. . #wissamlondontrip2017 #london #visitlondon #lovelondon #ilovelondon #london4all #london🇬🇧 #londoner #londonstyle #londonlife #london2017 #café

A post shared by Wissam Charafeddine (@wcharaf) on Apr 8, 2017 at 7:26am PDT

We walked back to the hotel, while Walid tried to help his nephew Ali via WhatsApp video chat on his Math homework, getting furistrated at times. We arrive at the hotel, and decided that we are not going to settle down for the remaining of the afternoon to relaxation, while we are on our last night, and we are going to thread down to one sight, that I have read so much about, and watched 3 documentaries about in preparation before going to London, but haven’t seen yet … the Tower Bridge.

#wissamlondontrip2017 #london #visitlondon #lovelondon #ilovelondon #london4all #london🇬🇧 #londoner #londonstyle #londonlife #london2017 #londonstreets

A post shared by Wissam Charafeddine (@wcharaf) on Apr 8, 2017 at 11:44am PDT

It takes two buses to get to the Tower Bridge, but the second bus is always free if you take it within the hour of taking the first bus.  We hopped on in the middle of Rush Hour, and took as about an hour and a half to get there, sitting on the second floor of the red bus, watching London and talking.  Can not have better travel time than that!

Final sunset London … on the tower bridge . #wissamlondontrip2017 #london #visitlondon #lovelondon #ilovelondon #london4all #london🇬🇧 #londoner #londonstyle #londonlife #london2017 #london

A post shared by Wissam Charafeddine (@wcharaf) on Apr 8, 2017 at 11:22am PDT

A post shared by Wissam Charafeddine (@wcharaf) on Apr 8, 2017 at 11:49am PDT

#wissamlondontrip2017 #london #visitlondon #lovelondon #ilovelondon #london4all #london🇬🇧 #londoner #londonstyle #londonlife #london2017 #towerbridge

A post shared by Wissam Charafeddine (@wcharaf) on Apr 8, 2017 at 11:27am PDT

We arrived prior to sunset to the Tower Bridge, full of tourists.  Strolled across it few times, and beneath it. Contemplated this great city and the people who have walked this bridge and watched this sunset.  We then got a couple Starbucks cafes and walked on the other side of the Thames across from the Tower of London.  We then headed to downtown, and we took a bus from there back to Edgware.  We arrived there about midnight, and it was still full of people and strolling cars.  The hookah cafes were bustling with guys and girls smoking and talking.  We ate couple stuffed lamb plates as a goodbye meal for me and Walid, and walked back to the hotel through Hyde Park after midnight.

#wissamlondontrip2017 #london #visitlondon #lovelondon #ilovelondon #london4all #london🇬🇧 #londoner #londonstyle #londonlife #london2017 #bigben

A post shared by Wissam Charafeddine (@wcharaf) on Apr 8, 2017 at 2:34pm PDT

We talked about what scares you in life?  What is the scariest thing to you?  For Walid, he still had a thing for evil spirits and demons which he believed in.  For me, it was humans,  sick or mentally ill delusional psychopathic humans.

We had short conversations to the sounds of Arabic music before our eyes fell heavy with sleep in the last night in London.

London Trip Day 7: Persian Dinner – Edgware – Ahmad Alkatib – Tower of London – Final Night He is an Iranian musician from Italy, living and working in London.  He was playing all kind of music from around the world during our dinner me and Walid at the Rose Garden restaurant, located in the London Elizabeth Hotel, right across from the Italian Fountains entrance of Hyde park.  

[douglassmiith]

Equivalent Experiences: What Are They?

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

An equivalent experience is one that has been deliberately conceived of and built to be able to be used by the widest possible range of people. To create an equivalent experience, you must understand all the different ways people interact with technology, as well as common barriers they experience.

If you spend enough time interacting with digital accessibility practitioners, you may encounter the phrase “equivalent experience.” This saying concisely sums up a lot of the philosophy behind accessibility work.

Our industry tends to place a lot of focus on how, often at the expense of why. For accessibility-related concerns, it is vital to learn about the history, and lived experiences of disabled people as a context for understanding the need for design and code created with access in mind.

This is the first of two articles on the topic of equivalency, and how it relates to digital accessibility. It will help us define what an equivalent experience is. Once we have a common understanding established, I’ll then discuss how to go about implementing equivalent experiences for common accessibility-related issues.

The State Of Things

The truth of the matter is that even though we live in a multi-device world full of smartphones, augmented reality, voice assistants, and IoT smart sensors, our default is still predominately:

Visual,

large screen,

fast connection,

powerful computer and display,

male,

white,

wealthy,

young,

Western,

technologically-literate,

and abled.

This is reflective of the biases that are inherent in how we design, develop and grow products.

The previous list may not be the most comfortable thing to read. If you haven’t closed the browser tab already, take a moment to consider your daily workflows, as well as who your coworkers are, and you’ll begin to understand what I’m getting at.

At its core, delivering an equivalent experience is ultimately about preserving intent — with the intent being the motivating force behind creating a website or web app and all the content and features it contains.

This translates to making the meaning behind every interaction, every component, every photo or illustration, every line of code being understandable by the widest range of people, regardless of their device or ability.

Prior Art

I’m not the first person to discuss this topic (and hopefully not the last). Speaker, trainer, and consultant Nicolas Steenhout is one such advocate. His great post, Accessibility is about people, not standards, is well worth reading.

If you’re the kind of person who is into podcasts, his A11y Rules has a wonderful series called Soundbites. It features “short discussions with people with disabilities about the barriers they encounter on the web.” These insightful interviews also touch on what this article discusses.

What Isn’t An Equivalent Experience?

Showing examples of what something is not can be a way to help define it. For equivalent experiences, an example would be a web app geared towards use by the general public not having a mobile breakpoint.

It’s not difficult to imagine a situation where I’d want to adjust my work benefits while on the go. (Large preview)

With this example, everyone using a device with a small display is forced to pinch, pan, and zoom to get what they need. Here, the burden is placed on anyone whose only crime was using a smartphone.

Most likely, whoever conceived of, designed, and developed this didn’t stop to think about circumstances other than their own. In this sort of (unfortunately still all too common) scenario, I all but guarantee that the web app looks great on the laptops or desktops of the designers and developers who made it.

A designer saying, “it has enough contrast for me and my ‘old’ eyes” is the same as when a dev says, “works on my machine.”

The thing is though, we don’t design or develop for ourselves.

So, are we really ok with saying, “you don’t matter” to folks who are not like us? #a11y

— Heather (@_hmig) December 19, 2019

People using a smartphone to access this website are victims of circumstance. The extra effort someone needs to do to get it to work indirectly communicates that they weren’t a priority, and therefore not valued. If you’ve used the web for any significant portion of time, I’m willing to bet this, or a similar experience has happened to you.

This example is also a hop, skip, and a jump away from another common, yet serious accessibility issue we often don’t consider: screen zooming:

Screen Zooming

Screen zooming is when someone is prevented from being able to zoom their displays and make text larger—many native mobile apps are guilty of this. When you disallow this sort of behavior, you’re telling prospective users that unless they have vision similar to you, you aren’t interested in them being able to use your app.

For this scenario, a gentle reminder that we will all get older, and with aging comes a whole host of vision-related concerns. A question you should be asking yourself is if your future self will be capable of using the things your present self is making. A follow-up question is if you’re also asking the people you’re managing this.

I just had my eyes dilated, so I can’t read any text that isn’t comically large. I don’t know how to use a screen reader. I’ll be fine in a few hours, but this has been a fascinating journey into how well third-party iOS apps respect text size accessibility settings!

(Thread)

— Em Lazer-Walker (@lazerwalker) January 29, 2020

Accessible Experiences Aren’t Necessarily Equivalent Ones

This might be a little difficult of a concept to grasp at first. Let’s use this Rube Goldberg machine made by Joseph Herscher to pass the pepper to his dinner guest to compare:

[embedded content]

To pass the pepper, the machine, sends it through an elaborate system of weights, counterweights, ramps, rolling objects, catapults, guillotines, burners, timers, carousels, etc. — all constructed from commonly found kitchen items. While this setup will technically ensure the pepper is passed, it is an annoying, overwrought, time-intensive process.

Many digital experiences are a lot like a Rube Goldberg machine when it comes to accessibility. Since accessibility issues are so prevalent, many forms of assistive technology provide a large suite of features to allow their user to work around common obstacles.

Unfortunately, discovering obstacles, and then figuring out and activating the appropriate combination of features to overcome them can take a disproportionate amount of time and effort.

To say it another way: A simple click on a button for an abled person may take far more time and effort for a disabled person, depending on how the button has been made.

Chilling Effects

Frustratingly, the extra time and effort a disabled person has to put into operating a technically accessible experience may feed back into their disability condition(s). For example, the presence of a motor control disability such as arthritis may make the overall experience even more taxing.

Cognitive accessibility concerns are also another important thing to consider. What may seem easy to understand or intuitive to use for one person may not be for another. This is especially prevalent in situations where there is:

Cognitive accessibility isn’t an abstract concern, either. Poor user interface design that ignores the circumstances of the end user and dumps too much cognitive load onto them can have very real, very serious consequences.

The military is full of examples of poor interfaces being forced on people who don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s also one of the origins of Inclusive Design thinking. (Large preview)

Compounding Effects

These factors are not mutually exclusive. Proponents of Spoon Theory know that inaccessible experiences conspire to sap a person’s mental and physical energy, leaving them exhausted and demotivated. Worse, these sorts of scenarios are often more than just a person perpetually operating at a diminished capacity.

Frustrating digital experiences can lead to a person abandoning them outright, internalizing the system’s fault as their own personal failure. This abandonment may also translate to a person’s willingness and ability to operate other digital interfaces. In other words: the more we turn people away, the more they’ll stop trying to show up.

“Nobody has complained before” is a silly excuse for not caring about accessibility. You’re right, they didn’t complain. They left.

— Vote blue, no matter who. (@karlgroves) December 8, 2018

Don’t Take My Word For It

To make the abstract immediate, I reached out on Twitter to ask people about their experiences using assistive technology to browse the web.

I also took a purposely loose definition of assistive technology. All-too-often we assume the term “accessible” only means “works in a screen reader.” The truth of the matter is that assistive technology is so much more than that.

The way the web is built — its foundational principles and behaviors — make it extraordinarily adaptable. It’s us, the people who build on and for the web, who break that. By failing to consider these devices and methods of interacting with web content, we implicitly drift further away from equivalency.

Consistency

For some, assistive technology can mean specialized browser extensions. These micro-apps are used to enhance, augment, and customize a browsing experience to better suit someone’s needs.

Damien Senger, digital designer, uses a browser extension called Midnight Lizard to enforce a similar experience across multiple websites. This helps them “to focus on the content directly and to limit having too big differences between websites. It is also helping me to avoid too harsh color contrasts that are really uncomfortable.“

Damien also writes, “Often websites are really difficult to read for me because either of the lack of consistency in the layout, too narrow lines or just not enough balance between font size and line height. Related to that, color can create a lot of unhelpful distraction and I am struggling when too harsh contrast is nearby text.”

How To Maintain Equivalency

In addition, Damien also augments their browsing experience by using ad blocking technology “not only for ads but to block animations or content that are too distracting for my ADHD.”

It’s not too difficult to imagine why distracting and annoying your users is a bad idea. In the case of ads, the industry is unregulated, meaning that rules to prohibit ADHD, migraine, and/or seizure-triggering animations aren’t honored. Through this lens, an ad blocker is a form of consumer self-defense.

I’ll say it again: Telling users their access isn’t as important as your bottom line is a BAD take. Ads are fine as long as they don’t create a barrier by moving! #ADHD #A11y #PSH #WCAG https://t.co/i6mifI0JRE

— Shell Little (@ShellELittle) February 27, 2020

Kenny Hitt also chimes in about ads: “…regardless of the platform, the thing that annoys me most are websites with ads that essentially cause the site to constantly auto update. This prevents me as a screen reader user from reading the content of those websites.”

Again, a lack of regulation means the user must take measures into their own hands to keep the experience equivalent.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Opportunity

A lack of an equivalent experience translates directly to lost opportunity. Many individuals I spoke with mentioned that they’d abandon a digital experience that was inaccessible more often than not.

Brian Moore mentions, “there are web sites where I like their products a lot but won’t buy them because the site itself is such a struggle, and attempts to reach out have met with either silence or resistance to taking any action.”

Brian cites the Fluance website as the most recent example. The bugs present in its shopping user flows prevents him from buying high-end consumer audio equipment.

Fluance’s entire web presence exists to sell products. While updating a website or web app to be accessible can be an effort-intensive process, it would definitely be in Fluance’s best interest to make sure its checkout user flow is as robust as it could be.

Those lost sales add up. (Large preview)

Opportunity isn’t limited to just e-commerce, either. As more and more services digitize, we paradoxically push more people out of being to live in the society that relies on these digitized services—people with protected rights. Again, this shift away from an equivalent experience is the culprit.

Justin Yarbrough was “applying for an accessibility-related job with the Arizona Department of Economic Security over the summer, where they wanted me to take an assessment. The button to start the assessment was a clickable div. They wound up waving the assessment requirement for the position.”

Jim Kiely tells me about his brother, who “has stopped paying his water bill online because the city water website [doesn’t] work well with a screen reader and high contrast.”

Personally, I have friends who have been prevented from submitting résumés to multiple sites because their job application portals were inaccessible.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Adaptability

Soren Hamby, product marketing agency manager and design advocate, writes of their experiences using screen magnification software and screen reading capabilities. Soren has “varying levels of vision so [they] tend to not always need the same level of accommodation.”

Of note, Soren mentions their struggles with grocery delivery apps, specifically “the carts often only read the quantities rather than the item name. It’s much easier to order with a sighted person.”

There are three things to consider here:

First is the surface-level acknowledgment that the app operates differently for different people, the main point this article is driving at.

Second is the fact that Soren uses multiple forms of assistive technology, with the mix a shifting combination depending on a combination of their task at hand and how well the digital interface meets their access needs.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Make sure that the labels for your interactive controls are relevant and concise.

Incorporate disability scenarios and conditions into your design personas.

Avoid using absolute length units. (No, seriously.)

Avoid setting maximum widths and heights.

Avoid using fixed and sticky-scrolling components, especially larger-sized ones.

Test your layouts by zooming and/or increasing your default type size to make sure that content does not get obscured.

This brings us to our third and most important point:

Autonomy

Having to rely on the help of a sighted person to order groceries is not ideal. For many, the acquiring, preparation, and consuming of food can be highly personal acts. Being forced to incorporate outside assistance into this process is far different than willingly inviting someone in to share an experience. The same notion applies to every other digital product, as well.

Kenny also mentions grocery apps: “…my local Kroger grocery store has started an app redesign in June 2019 that is breaking accessibility with their app.” In discussing this regression, he goes on to elaborate, “Because I can’t financially change to another business, I won’t let it drop. Kroger is going to discover that I don’t stop with a problem. Persistence in solving problems is a requirement for any disabled person if you want to succeed in the world.”

This app looks great, provided you can see it. (Large preview)

Equality

Kroger would be wise to listen to Kenny’s feedback. The grocery company Winn-Dixie was recently successfully sued for not being operable with a screen reader. The lawsuit argued that the grocer’s website was heavily integrated with their physical stores, and therefore violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Another recent case involves the Domino’s Pizza franchise. Taken all the way to the Supreme Court, the ruling clearly and unambiguously states that preventing someone from using a website or app, simply because they used screen reading software, is unconstitutional.

For both cases, the cost to implement fixes were far cheaper than going to court—something to think about the next time you’re deciding where to order pizza.

Despite some ugly misconceptions about the ruling, the evidence is clear: in the United States, there is now legal precedent for private companies to be sued for violating civil rights via an inaccessible digital experience. Europe and some parts of Asia have similar laws, as well.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Reactivity

Another way to maintain an equivalent experience — one that is often not thought about — is to give reports about accessibility issues the same weight and concern as other software bugs.

Reported accessibility issues are oftentimes downplayed and ignored, or are sent to someone ignorant of the issue and/or powerless to fix it.

Kenny, who started using a computer with a screen reader in 1984 says, “When I run into accessibility issues nowadays, I’ll try reporting it, when I get the usual response from the feedback of the person not caring, I just give up and walk away. If [the response] comes from somebody in marketing agency who doesn’t understand accessibility, I just give up and go away. There’s no point in trying to teach these people about accessibility.”

Kenny’s view is shared by many others in the disability community. Remember what I said about compounding effects earlier.

Brian reports that,

“If I find significant issues with a site, I do report it. Depending on who I talk to it ranges from ‘here’s what doesn’t work’ to all kinds of technical detail about why if I can get to the right people.”

Getting it to the right people is key. Another part of equivalent experience is handling feedback in a timely and constructive way, much as how you would with any other issue with your product or service.

Responding to an accessibility issue is easy:

Thank the person for taking the time and effort to report the issue.

Acknowledge the issue and identify what person or team will be handling it.

Ask clarifying questions as needed.

Offer potential workarounds, with the understanding that they’re only temporary until the underlying issue is addressed.

Offer to involve them in the process, including notifying them when the issue has been fixed.

Being open, honest, and transparent about your bug fixing process goes a long way to establishing trust in a population that has historically and routinely been overlooked.

Also know that assigning someone to mind an email address to conduct tasks on behalf of an assistive technology user is not an appropriate, effective, or sustainable solution. Remember the concerns surrounding autonomy discussed earlier.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Create an accessibility statement, including known issues, a tentative timeline for their fixes, and easy to discover contact information.

Ensure that anyone customer-facing (quality assurance, customer support, marketing agency, etc.) are trained on protocol for accessibility-related issue reporting.

Quantify accessibility-related issues, both internal and reported.

Be on the lookout for patterns and trends with discovered accessibility issues, as they represent learning opportunities.

Understand that not all platforms to collect feedback are created equal.

Motivation

We’ve covered actual people’s everyday frustrations, as well as civil rights and the current legal landscape. If these don’t motivate you, allow me to present another factor to consider: profit.

There are two provoking studies I’d like to call attention to, but they are by no means the only studies performed in this space.

(Large preview)

First is the Click Away Pound Survey, a survey conducted in both 2016 and 2019 to “explore the online shopping experience of people with disabilities and examine the cost to business of ignoring disabled shoppers.”

The survey discovered that more than 4 million people abandoned a retail website because of the access barriers they found. These people represent 17.1 billion pounds (~$21.1 billion USD) in lost potential revenue.

Second is the The Purchasing Power of Working-Age Adults With Disabilities (PDF), conducted in 2018 by the American Institutes for Research. This study discovered that there is an estimated $490 billion in disposable income amongst disabled working-age adults. That’s billion with a capital B.

There are two of the (many) takeaways from these studies I’d like to highlight:

First is that from a historical perspective, the web is still very much new. On top of that, its ubiquity is even more recent, meaning that use by the general population is a small sliver of the amount of time it’s been around.

Second is that the general population contains many people who are disabled, and that their needs are not being met. These unmet needs represent billions of dollars of potential revenue.

This is a gigantic market that we, as an industry, are only now becoming aware of. Rather than approaching accessibility with a mindset of risk aversion, why not use this learning as a great way to view your current and future business opportunities?

Complying with the ADA is by definition the legally required minimum for accessibility. It doesn’t account for a good user experience, usability, and innovation. Unless you strive for the minimum all the time, compliance is not enough.https://t.co/qOYw6ji23u

— mikey is at home (@mikeyil) March 5, 2020

Let’s Not Stop Here

Too often we think of accessibility as a problem to be solved, rather than a way of looking at the world. Equivalent experiences necessitate that we question our assumptions and biases and think about experiences outside of our own. It can be an uncomfortable thing to think about at first, but it’s all in the service of making things usable for all.

As web professionals, it is our job, and our privilege to ensure that the experiences we deliver are equivalent. In the second part, we’ll investigate how to do just that.

Further Reading

“WCAG Primer,” Tetra Logical

“The Web Accessibility Basics,” Marco Zehe’s Accessibility Blog

“Web Accessibility Checklist: 15 Things To Improve Your Website Accessibility,” WebsiteSetup.org

“The Importance Of Manual Accessibility Testing: Call The Professionals,” Eric Bailey, Smashing Magazine

“Taking Accessibility Beyond Compliance,” Dennis Deacon, 24 Accessibility

“Videos Of People With Disabilities Using Tech,” Hampus Sethfors, Axess Lab

“Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore The Impact And Benefits For Everyone,” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), W3C

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

Via http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they/

source https://scpie.weebly.com/blog/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they

[laurelkrugerr]

Equivalent Experiences: What Are They?

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

An equivalent experience is one that has been deliberately conceived of and built to be able to be used by the widest possible range of people. To create an equivalent experience, you must understand all the different ways people interact with technology, as well as common barriers they experience.

If you spend enough time interacting with digital accessibility practitioners, you may encounter the phrase “equivalent experience.” This saying concisely sums up a lot of the philosophy behind accessibility work.

Our industry tends to place a lot of focus on how, often at the expense of why. For accessibility-related concerns, it is vital to learn about the history, and lived experiences of disabled people as a context for understanding the need for design and code created with access in mind.

This is the first of two articles on the topic of equivalency, and how it relates to digital accessibility. It will help us define what an equivalent experience is. Once we have a common understanding established, I’ll then discuss how to go about implementing equivalent experiences for common accessibility-related issues.

The State Of Things

The truth of the matter is that even though we live in a multi-device world full of smartphones, augmented reality, voice assistants, and IoT smart sensors, our default is still predominately:

Visual,

large screen,

fast connection,

powerful computer and display,

male,

white,

wealthy,

young,

Western,

technologically-literate,

and abled.

This is reflective of the biases that are inherent in how we design, develop and grow products.

The previous list may not be the most comfortable thing to read. If you haven’t closed the browser tab already, take a moment to consider your daily workflows, as well as who your coworkers are, and you’ll begin to understand what I’m getting at.

At its core, delivering an equivalent experience is ultimately about preserving intent — with the intent being the motivating force behind creating a website or web app and all the content and features it contains.

This translates to making the meaning behind every interaction, every component, every photo or illustration, every line of code being understandable by the widest range of people, regardless of their device or ability.

Prior Art

I’m not the first person to discuss this topic (and hopefully not the last). Speaker, trainer, and consultant Nicolas Steenhout is one such advocate. His great post, Accessibility is about people, not standards, is well worth reading.

If you’re the kind of person who is into podcasts, his A11y Rules has a wonderful series called Soundbites. It features “short discussions with people with disabilities about the barriers they encounter on the web.” These insightful interviews also touch on what this article discusses.

What Isn’t An Equivalent Experience?

Showing examples of what something is not can be a way to help define it. For equivalent experiences, an example would be a web app geared towards use by the general public not having a mobile breakpoint.

It’s not difficult to imagine a situation where I’d want to adjust my work benefits while on the go. (Large preview)

With this example, everyone using a device with a small display is forced to pinch, pan, and zoom to get what they need. Here, the burden is placed on anyone whose only crime was using a smartphone.

Most likely, whoever conceived of, designed, and developed this didn’t stop to think about circumstances other than their own. In this sort of (unfortunately still all too common) scenario, I all but guarantee that the web app looks great on the laptops or desktops of the designers and developers who made it.

A designer saying, “it has enough contrast for me and my ‘old’ eyes” is the same as when a dev says, “works on my machine.”

The thing is though, we don’t design or develop for ourselves.

So, are we really ok with saying, “you don’t matter” to folks who are not like us? #a11y

— Heather (@_hmig) December 19, 2019

People using a smartphone to access this website are victims of circumstance. The extra effort someone needs to do to get it to work indirectly communicates that they weren’t a priority, and therefore not valued. If you’ve used the web for any significant portion of time, I’m willing to bet this, or a similar experience has happened to you.

This example is also a hop, skip, and a jump away from another common, yet serious accessibility issue we often don’t consider: screen zooming:

Screen Zooming

Screen zooming is when someone is prevented from being able to zoom their displays and make text larger—many native mobile apps are guilty of this. When you disallow this sort of behavior, you’re telling prospective users that unless they have vision similar to you, you aren’t interested in them being able to use your app.

For this scenario, a gentle reminder that we will all get older, and with aging comes a whole host of vision-related concerns. A question you should be asking yourself is if your future self will be capable of using the things your present self is making. A follow-up question is if you’re also asking the people you’re managing this.

I just had my eyes dilated, so I can’t read any text that isn’t comically large. I don’t know how to use a screen reader. I’ll be fine in a few hours, but this has been a fascinating journey into how well third-party iOS apps respect text size accessibility settings!

(Thread)

— Em Lazer-Walker (@lazerwalker) January 29, 2020

Accessible Experiences Aren’t Necessarily Equivalent Ones

This might be a little difficult of a concept to grasp at first. Let’s use this Rube Goldberg machine made by Joseph Herscher to pass the pepper to his dinner guest to compare:

[embedded content]

To pass the pepper, the machine, sends it through an elaborate system of weights, counterweights, ramps, rolling objects, catapults, guillotines, burners, timers, carousels, etc. — all constructed from commonly found kitchen items. While this setup will technically ensure the pepper is passed, it is an annoying, overwrought, time-intensive process.

Many digital experiences are a lot like a Rube Goldberg machine when it comes to accessibility. Since accessibility issues are so prevalent, many forms of assistive technology provide a large suite of features to allow their user to work around common obstacles.

Unfortunately, discovering obstacles, and then figuring out and activating the appropriate combination of features to overcome them can take a disproportionate amount of time and effort.

To say it another way: A simple click on a button for an abled person may take far more time and effort for a disabled person, depending on how the button has been made.

Chilling Effects

Frustratingly, the extra time and effort a disabled person has to put into operating a technically accessible experience may feed back into their disability condition(s). For example, the presence of a motor control disability such as arthritis may make the overall experience even more taxing.

Cognitive accessibility concerns are also another important thing to consider. What may seem easy to understand or intuitive to use for one person may not be for another. This is especially prevalent in situations where there is:

Cognitive accessibility isn’t an abstract concern, either. Poor user interface design that ignores the circumstances of the end user and dumps too much cognitive load onto them can have very real, very serious consequences.

The military is full of examples of poor interfaces being forced on people who don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s also one of the origins of Inclusive Design thinking. (Large preview)

Compounding Effects

These factors are not mutually exclusive. Proponents of Spoon Theory know that inaccessible experiences conspire to sap a person’s mental and physical energy, leaving them exhausted and demotivated. Worse, these sorts of scenarios are often more than just a person perpetually operating at a diminished capacity.

Frustrating digital experiences can lead to a person abandoning them outright, internalizing the system’s fault as their own personal failure. This abandonment may also translate to a person’s willingness and ability to operate other digital interfaces. In other words: the more we turn people away, the more they’ll stop trying to show up.

“Nobody has complained before” is a silly excuse for not caring about accessibility. You’re right, they didn’t complain. They left.

— Vote blue, no matter who. (@karlgroves) December 8, 2018

Don’t Take My Word For It

To make the abstract immediate, I reached out on Twitter to ask people about their experiences using assistive technology to browse the web.

I also took a purposely loose definition of assistive technology. All-too-often we assume the term “accessible” only means “works in a screen reader.” The truth of the matter is that assistive technology is so much more than that.

The way the web is built — its foundational principles and behaviors — make it extraordinarily adaptable. It’s us, the people who build on and for the web, who break that. By failing to consider these devices and methods of interacting with web content, we implicitly drift further away from equivalency.

Consistency

For some, assistive technology can mean specialized browser extensions. These micro-apps are used to enhance, augment, and customize a browsing experience to better suit someone’s needs.

Damien Senger, digital designer, uses a browser extension called Midnight Lizard to enforce a similar experience across multiple websites. This helps them “to focus on the content directly and to limit having too big differences between websites. It is also helping me to avoid too harsh color contrasts that are really uncomfortable.“

Damien also writes, “Often websites are really difficult to read for me because either of the lack of consistency in the layout, too narrow lines or just not enough balance between font size and line height. Related to that, color can create a lot of unhelpful distraction and I am struggling when too harsh contrast is nearby text.”

How To Maintain Equivalency

In addition, Damien also augments their browsing experience by using ad blocking technology “not only for ads but to block animations or content that are too distracting for my ADHD.”

It’s not too difficult to imagine why distracting and annoying your users is a bad idea. In the case of ads, the industry is unregulated, meaning that rules to prohibit ADHD, migraine, and/or seizure-triggering animations aren’t honored. Through this lens, an ad blocker is a form of consumer self-defense.

I’ll say it again: Telling users their access isn’t as important as your bottom line is a BAD take. Ads are fine as long as they don’t create a barrier by moving! #ADHD #A11y #PSH #WCAG https://t.co/i6mifI0JRE

— Shell Little (@ShellELittle) February 27, 2020

Kenny Hitt also chimes in about ads: “…regardless of the platform, the thing that annoys me most are websites with ads that essentially cause the site to constantly auto update. This prevents me as a screen reader user from reading the content of those websites.”

Again, a lack of regulation means the user must take measures into their own hands to keep the experience equivalent.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Opportunity

A lack of an equivalent experience translates directly to lost opportunity. Many individuals I spoke with mentioned that they’d abandon a digital experience that was inaccessible more often than not.

Brian Moore mentions, “there are web sites where I like their products a lot but won’t buy them because the site itself is such a struggle, and attempts to reach out have met with either silence or resistance to taking any action.”

Brian cites the Fluance website as the most recent example. The bugs present in its shopping user flows prevents him from buying high-end consumer audio equipment.

Fluance’s entire web presence exists to sell products. While updating a website or web app to be accessible can be an effort-intensive process, it would definitely be in Fluance’s best interest to make sure its checkout user flow is as robust as it could be.

Those lost sales add up. (Large preview)

Opportunity isn’t limited to just e-commerce, either. As more and more services digitize, we paradoxically push more people out of being to live in the society that relies on these digitized services—people with protected rights. Again, this shift away from an equivalent experience is the culprit.

Justin Yarbrough was “applying for an accessibility-related job with the Arizona Department of Economic Security over the summer, where they wanted me to take an assessment. The button to start the assessment was a clickable div. They wound up waving the assessment requirement for the position.”

Jim Kiely tells me about his brother, who “has stopped paying his water bill online because the city water website [doesn’t] work well with a screen reader and high contrast.”

Personally, I have friends who have been prevented from submitting résumés to multiple sites because their job application portals were inaccessible.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Adaptability

Soren Hamby, product marketing agency manager and design advocate, writes of their experiences using screen magnification software and screen reading capabilities. Soren has “varying levels of vision so [they] tend to not always need the same level of accommodation.”

Of note, Soren mentions their struggles with grocery delivery apps, specifically “the carts often only read the quantities rather than the item name. It’s much easier to order with a sighted person.”

There are three things to consider here:

First is the surface-level acknowledgment that the app operates differently for different people, the main point this article is driving at.

Second is the fact that Soren uses multiple forms of assistive technology, with the mix a shifting combination depending on a combination of their task at hand and how well the digital interface meets their access needs.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Make sure that the labels for your interactive controls are relevant and concise.

Incorporate disability scenarios and conditions into your design personas.

Avoid using absolute length units. (No, seriously.)

Avoid setting maximum widths and heights.

Avoid using fixed and sticky-scrolling components, especially larger-sized ones.

Test your layouts by zooming and/or increasing your default type size to make sure that content does not get obscured.

This brings us to our third and most important point:

Autonomy

Having to rely on the help of a sighted person to order groceries is not ideal. For many, the acquiring, preparation, and consuming of food can be highly personal acts. Being forced to incorporate outside assistance into this process is far different than willingly inviting someone in to share an experience. The same notion applies to every other digital product, as well.

Kenny also mentions grocery apps: “…my local Kroger grocery store has started an app redesign in June 2019 that is breaking accessibility with their app.” In discussing this regression, he goes on to elaborate, “Because I can’t financially change to another business, I won’t let it drop. Kroger is going to discover that I don’t stop with a problem. Persistence in solving problems is a requirement for any disabled person if you want to succeed in the world.”

This app looks great, provided you can see it. (Large preview)

Equality

Kroger would be wise to listen to Kenny’s feedback. The grocery company Winn-Dixie was recently successfully sued for not being operable with a screen reader. The lawsuit argued that the grocer’s website was heavily integrated with their physical stores, and therefore violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Another recent case involves the Domino’s Pizza franchise. Taken all the way to the Supreme Court, the ruling clearly and unambiguously states that preventing someone from using a website or app, simply because they used screen reading software, is unconstitutional.

For both cases, the cost to implement fixes were far cheaper than going to court—something to think about the next time you’re deciding where to order pizza.

Despite some ugly misconceptions about the ruling, the evidence is clear: in the United States, there is now legal precedent for private companies to be sued for violating civil rights via an inaccessible digital experience. Europe and some parts of Asia have similar laws, as well.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Reactivity

Another way to maintain an equivalent experience — one that is often not thought about — is to give reports about accessibility issues the same weight and concern as other software bugs.

Reported accessibility issues are oftentimes downplayed and ignored, or are sent to someone ignorant of the issue and/or powerless to fix it.

Kenny, who started using a computer with a screen reader in 1984 says, “When I run into accessibility issues nowadays, I’ll try reporting it, when I get the usual response from the feedback of the person not caring, I just give up and walk away. If [the response] comes from somebody in marketing agency who doesn’t understand accessibility, I just give up and go away. There’s no point in trying to teach these people about accessibility.”

Kenny’s view is shared by many others in the disability community. Remember what I said about compounding effects earlier.

Brian reports that,

“If I find significant issues with a site, I do report it. Depending on who I talk to it ranges from ‘here’s what doesn’t work’ to all kinds of technical detail about why if I can get to the right people.”

Getting it to the right people is key. Another part of equivalent experience is handling feedback in a timely and constructive way, much as how you would with any other issue with your product or service.

Responding to an accessibility issue is easy:

Thank the person for taking the time and effort to report the issue.

Acknowledge the issue and identify what person or team will be handling it.

Ask clarifying questions as needed.

Offer potential workarounds, with the understanding that they’re only temporary until the underlying issue is addressed.

Offer to involve them in the process, including notifying them when the issue has been fixed.

Being open, honest, and transparent about your bug fixing process goes a long way to establishing trust in a population that has historically and routinely been overlooked.

Also know that assigning someone to mind an email address to conduct tasks on behalf of an assistive technology user is not an appropriate, effective, or sustainable solution. Remember the concerns surrounding autonomy discussed earlier.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Create an accessibility statement, including known issues, a tentative timeline for their fixes, and easy to discover contact information.

Ensure that anyone customer-facing (quality assurance, customer support, marketing agency, etc.) are trained on protocol for accessibility-related issue reporting.

Quantify accessibility-related issues, both internal and reported.

Be on the lookout for patterns and trends with discovered accessibility issues, as they represent learning opportunities.

Understand that not all platforms to collect feedback are created equal.

Motivation

We’ve covered actual people’s everyday frustrations, as well as civil rights and the current legal landscape. If these don’t motivate you, allow me to present another factor to consider: profit.

There are two provoking studies I’d like to call attention to, but they are by no means the only studies performed in this space.

(Large preview)

First is the Click Away Pound Survey, a survey conducted in both 2016 and 2019 to “explore the online shopping experience of people with disabilities and examine the cost to business of ignoring disabled shoppers.”

The survey discovered that more than 4 million people abandoned a retail website because of the access barriers they found. These people represent 17.1 billion pounds (~$21.1 billion USD) in lost potential revenue.

Second is the The Purchasing Power of Working-Age Adults With Disabilities (PDF), conducted in 2018 by the American Institutes for Research. This study discovered that there is an estimated $490 billion in disposable income amongst disabled working-age adults. That’s billion with a capital B.

There are two of the (many) takeaways from these studies I’d like to highlight:

First is that from a historical perspective, the web is still very much new. On top of that, its ubiquity is even more recent, meaning that use by the general population is a small sliver of the amount of time it’s been around.

Second is that the general population contains many people who are disabled, and that their needs are not being met. These unmet needs represent billions of dollars of potential revenue.

This is a gigantic market that we, as an industry, are only now becoming aware of. Rather than approaching accessibility with a mindset of risk aversion, why not use this learning as a great way to view your current and future business opportunities?

Complying with the ADA is by definition the legally required minimum for accessibility. It doesn’t account for a good user experience, usability, and innovation. Unless you strive for the minimum all the time, compliance is not enough.https://t.co/qOYw6ji23u

— mikey is at home (@mikeyil) March 5, 2020

Let’s Not Stop Here

Too often we think of accessibility as a problem to be solved, rather than a way of looking at the world. Equivalent experiences necessitate that we question our assumptions and biases and think about experiences outside of our own. It can be an uncomfortable thing to think about at first, but it’s all in the service of making things usable for all.

As web professionals, it is our job, and our privilege to ensure that the experiences we deliver are equivalent. In the second part, we’ll investigate how to do just that.

Further Reading

“WCAG Primer,” Tetra Logical

“The Web Accessibility Basics,” Marco Zehe’s Accessibility Blog

“Web Accessibility Checklist: 15 Things To Improve Your Website Accessibility,” WebsiteSetup.org

“The Importance Of Manual Accessibility Testing: Call The Professionals,” Eric Bailey, Smashing Magazine

“Taking Accessibility Beyond Compliance,” Dennis Deacon, 24 Accessibility

“Videos Of People With Disabilities Using Tech,” Hampus Sethfors, Axess Lab

“Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore The Impact And Benefits For Everyone,” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), W3C

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/05/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they.html

[riichardwilson]

Equivalent Experiences: What Are They?

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

An equivalent experience is one that has been deliberately conceived of and built to be able to be used by the widest possible range of people. To create an equivalent experience, you must understand all the different ways people interact with technology, as well as common barriers they experience.

If you spend enough time interacting with digital accessibility practitioners, you may encounter the phrase “equivalent experience.” This saying concisely sums up a lot of the philosophy behind accessibility work.

Our industry tends to place a lot of focus on how, often at the expense of why. For accessibility-related concerns, it is vital to learn about the history, and lived experiences of disabled people as a context for understanding the need for design and code created with access in mind.

This is the first of two articles on the topic of equivalency, and how it relates to digital accessibility. It will help us define what an equivalent experience is. Once we have a common understanding established, I’ll then discuss how to go about implementing equivalent experiences for common accessibility-related issues.

The State Of Things

The truth of the matter is that even though we live in a multi-device world full of smartphones, augmented reality, voice assistants, and IoT smart sensors, our default is still predominately:

Visual,

large screen,

fast connection,

powerful computer and display,

male,

white,

wealthy,

young,

Western,

technologically-literate,

and abled.

This is reflective of the biases that are inherent in how we design, develop and grow products.

The previous list may not be the most comfortable thing to read. If you haven’t closed the browser tab already, take a moment to consider your daily workflows, as well as who your coworkers are, and you’ll begin to understand what I’m getting at.

At its core, delivering an equivalent experience is ultimately about preserving intent — with the intent being the motivating force behind creating a website or web app and all the content and features it contains.

This translates to making the meaning behind every interaction, every component, every photo or illustration, every line of code being understandable by the widest range of people, regardless of their device or ability.

Prior Art

I’m not the first person to discuss this topic (and hopefully not the last). Speaker, trainer, and consultant Nicolas Steenhout is one such advocate. His great post, Accessibility is about people, not standards, is well worth reading.

If you’re the kind of person who is into podcasts, his A11y Rules has a wonderful series called Soundbites. It features “short discussions with people with disabilities about the barriers they encounter on the web.” These insightful interviews also touch on what this article discusses.

What Isn’t An Equivalent Experience?

Showing examples of what something is not can be a way to help define it. For equivalent experiences, an example would be a web app geared towards use by the general public not having a mobile breakpoint.

It’s not difficult to imagine a situation where I’d want to adjust my work benefits while on the go. (Large preview)

With this example, everyone using a device with a small display is forced to pinch, pan, and zoom to get what they need. Here, the burden is placed on anyone whose only crime was using a smartphone.

Most likely, whoever conceived of, designed, and developed this didn’t stop to think about circumstances other than their own. In this sort of (unfortunately still all too common) scenario, I all but guarantee that the web app looks great on the laptops or desktops of the designers and developers who made it.

A designer saying, “it has enough contrast for me and my ‘old’ eyes” is the same as when a dev says, “works on my machine.”

The thing is though, we don’t design or develop for ourselves.

So, are we really ok with saying, “you don’t matter” to folks who are not like us? #a11y

— Heather (@_hmig) December 19, 2019

People using a smartphone to access this website are victims of circumstance. The extra effort someone needs to do to get it to work indirectly communicates that they weren’t a priority, and therefore not valued. If you’ve used the web for any significant portion of time, I’m willing to bet this, or a similar experience has happened to you.

This example is also a hop, skip, and a jump away from another common, yet serious accessibility issue we often don’t consider: screen zooming:

Screen Zooming

Screen zooming is when someone is prevented from being able to zoom their displays and make text larger—many native mobile apps are guilty of this. When you disallow this sort of behavior, you’re telling prospective users that unless they have vision similar to you, you aren’t interested in them being able to use your app.

For this scenario, a gentle reminder that we will all get older, and with aging comes a whole host of vision-related concerns. A question you should be asking yourself is if your future self will be capable of using the things your present self is making. A follow-up question is if you’re also asking the people you’re managing this.

I just had my eyes dilated, so I can’t read any text that isn’t comically large. I don’t know how to use a screen reader. I’ll be fine in a few hours, but this has been a fascinating journey into how well third-party iOS apps respect text size accessibility settings!

(Thread)

— Em Lazer-Walker (@lazerwalker) January 29, 2020

Accessible Experiences Aren’t Necessarily Equivalent Ones

This might be a little difficult of a concept to grasp at first. Let’s use this Rube Goldberg machine made by Joseph Herscher to pass the pepper to his dinner guest to compare:

[embedded content]

To pass the pepper, the machine, sends it through an elaborate system of weights, counterweights, ramps, rolling objects, catapults, guillotines, burners, timers, carousels, etc. — all constructed from commonly found kitchen items. While this setup will technically ensure the pepper is passed, it is an annoying, overwrought, time-intensive process.

Many digital experiences are a lot like a Rube Goldberg machine when it comes to accessibility. Since accessibility issues are so prevalent, many forms of assistive technology provide a large suite of features to allow their user to work around common obstacles.

Unfortunately, discovering obstacles, and then figuring out and activating the appropriate combination of features to overcome them can take a disproportionate amount of time and effort.

To say it another way: A simple click on a button for an abled person may take far more time and effort for a disabled person, depending on how the button has been made.

Chilling Effects

Frustratingly, the extra time and effort a disabled person has to put into operating a technically accessible experience may feed back into their disability condition(s). For example, the presence of a motor control disability such as arthritis may make the overall experience even more taxing.

Cognitive accessibility concerns are also another important thing to consider. What may seem easy to understand or intuitive to use for one person may not be for another. This is especially prevalent in situations where there is:

Cognitive accessibility isn’t an abstract concern, either. Poor user interface design that ignores the circumstances of the end user and dumps too much cognitive load onto them can have very real, very serious consequences.

The military is full of examples of poor interfaces being forced on people who don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s also one of the origins of Inclusive Design thinking. (Large preview)

Compounding Effects

These factors are not mutually exclusive. Proponents of Spoon Theory know that inaccessible experiences conspire to sap a person’s mental and physical energy, leaving them exhausted and demotivated. Worse, these sorts of scenarios are often more than just a person perpetually operating at a diminished capacity.

Frustrating digital experiences can lead to a person abandoning them outright, internalizing the system’s fault as their own personal failure. This abandonment may also translate to a person’s willingness and ability to operate other digital interfaces. In other words: the more we turn people away, the more they’ll stop trying to show up.

“Nobody has complained before” is a silly excuse for not caring about accessibility. You’re right, they didn’t complain. They left.

— Vote blue, no matter who. (@karlgroves) December 8, 2018

Don’t Take My Word For It

To make the abstract immediate, I reached out on Twitter to ask people about their experiences using assistive technology to browse the web.

I also took a purposely loose definition of assistive technology. All-too-often we assume the term “accessible” only means “works in a screen reader.” The truth of the matter is that assistive technology is so much more than that.

The way the web is built — its foundational principles and behaviors — make it extraordinarily adaptable. It’s us, the people who build on and for the web, who break that. By failing to consider these devices and methods of interacting with web content, we implicitly drift further away from equivalency.

Consistency

For some, assistive technology can mean specialized browser extensions. These micro-apps are used to enhance, augment, and customize a browsing experience to better suit someone’s needs.

Damien Senger, digital designer, uses a browser extension called Midnight Lizard to enforce a similar experience across multiple websites. This helps them “to focus on the content directly and to limit having too big differences between websites. It is also helping me to avoid too harsh color contrasts that are really uncomfortable.“

Damien also writes, “Often websites are really difficult to read for me because either of the lack of consistency in the layout, too narrow lines or just not enough balance between font size and line height. Related to that, color can create a lot of unhelpful distraction and I am struggling when too harsh contrast is nearby text.”

How To Maintain Equivalency

In addition, Damien also augments their browsing experience by using ad blocking technology “not only for ads but to block animations or content that are too distracting for my ADHD.”

It’s not too difficult to imagine why distracting and annoying your users is a bad idea. In the case of ads, the industry is unregulated, meaning that rules to prohibit ADHD, migraine, and/or seizure-triggering animations aren’t honored. Through this lens, an ad blocker is a form of consumer self-defense.

I’ll say it again: Telling users their access isn’t as important as your bottom line is a BAD take. Ads are fine as long as they don’t create a barrier by moving! #ADHD #A11y #PSH #WCAG https://t.co/i6mifI0JRE

— Shell Little (@ShellELittle) February 27, 2020

Kenny Hitt also chimes in about ads: “…regardless of the platform, the thing that annoys me most are websites with ads that essentially cause the site to constantly auto update. This prevents me as a screen reader user from reading the content of those websites.”

Again, a lack of regulation means the user must take measures into their own hands to keep the experience equivalent.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Opportunity

A lack of an equivalent experience translates directly to lost opportunity. Many individuals I spoke with mentioned that they’d abandon a digital experience that was inaccessible more often than not.

Brian Moore mentions, “there are web sites where I like their products a lot but won’t buy them because the site itself is such a struggle, and attempts to reach out have met with either silence or resistance to taking any action.”

Brian cites the Fluance website as the most recent example. The bugs present in its shopping user flows prevents him from buying high-end consumer audio equipment.

Fluance’s entire web presence exists to sell products. While updating a website or web app to be accessible can be an effort-intensive process, it would definitely be in Fluance’s best interest to make sure its checkout user flow is as robust as it could be.

Those lost sales add up. (Large preview)

Opportunity isn’t limited to just e-commerce, either. As more and more services digitize, we paradoxically push more people out of being to live in the society that relies on these digitized services—people with protected rights. Again, this shift away from an equivalent experience is the culprit.

Justin Yarbrough was “applying for an accessibility-related job with the Arizona Department of Economic Security over the summer, where they wanted me to take an assessment. The button to start the assessment was a clickable div. They wound up waving the assessment requirement for the position.”

Jim Kiely tells me about his brother, who “has stopped paying his water bill online because the city water website [doesn’t] work well with a screen reader and high contrast.”

Personally, I have friends who have been prevented from submitting résumés to multiple sites because their job application portals were inaccessible.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Adaptability

Soren Hamby, product marketing agency manager and design advocate, writes of their experiences using screen magnification software and screen reading capabilities. Soren has “varying levels of vision so [they] tend to not always need the same level of accommodation.”

Of note, Soren mentions their struggles with grocery delivery apps, specifically “the carts often only read the quantities rather than the item name. It’s much easier to order with a sighted person.”

There are three things to consider here:

First is the surface-level acknowledgment that the app operates differently for different people, the main point this article is driving at.

Second is the fact that Soren uses multiple forms of assistive technology, with the mix a shifting combination depending on a combination of their task at hand and how well the digital interface meets their access needs.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Make sure that the labels for your interactive controls are relevant and concise.

Incorporate disability scenarios and conditions into your design personas.

Avoid using absolute length units. (No, seriously.)

Avoid setting maximum widths and heights.

Avoid using fixed and sticky-scrolling components, especially larger-sized ones.

Test your layouts by zooming and/or increasing your default type size to make sure that content does not get obscured.

This brings us to our third and most important point:

Autonomy

Having to rely on the help of a sighted person to order groceries is not ideal. For many, the acquiring, preparation, and consuming of food can be highly personal acts. Being forced to incorporate outside assistance into this process is far different than willingly inviting someone in to share an experience. The same notion applies to every other digital product, as well.

Kenny also mentions grocery apps: “…my local Kroger grocery store has started an app redesign in June 2019 that is breaking accessibility with their app.” In discussing this regression, he goes on to elaborate, “Because I can’t financially change to another business, I won’t let it drop. Kroger is going to discover that I don’t stop with a problem. Persistence in solving problems is a requirement for any disabled person if you want to succeed in the world.”

This app looks great, provided you can see it. (Large preview)

Equality

Kroger would be wise to listen to Kenny’s feedback. The grocery company Winn-Dixie was recently successfully sued for not being operable with a screen reader. The lawsuit argued that the grocer’s website was heavily integrated with their physical stores, and therefore violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Another recent case involves the Domino’s Pizza franchise. Taken all the way to the Supreme Court, the ruling clearly and unambiguously states that preventing someone from using a website or app, simply because they used screen reading software, is unconstitutional.

For both cases, the cost to implement fixes were far cheaper than going to court—something to think about the next time you’re deciding where to order pizza.

Despite some ugly misconceptions about the ruling, the evidence is clear: in the United States, there is now legal precedent for private companies to be sued for violating civil rights via an inaccessible digital experience. Europe and some parts of Asia have similar laws, as well.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Reactivity

Another way to maintain an equivalent experience — one that is often not thought about — is to give reports about accessibility issues the same weight and concern as other software bugs.

Reported accessibility issues are oftentimes downplayed and ignored, or are sent to someone ignorant of the issue and/or powerless to fix it.

Kenny, who started using a computer with a screen reader in 1984 says, “When I run into accessibility issues nowadays, I’ll try reporting it, when I get the usual response from the feedback of the person not caring, I just give up and walk away. If [the response] comes from somebody in marketing agency who doesn’t understand accessibility, I just give up and go away. There’s no point in trying to teach these people about accessibility.”

Kenny’s view is shared by many others in the disability community. Remember what I said about compounding effects earlier.

Brian reports that,

“If I find significant issues with a site, I do report it. Depending on who I talk to it ranges from ‘here’s what doesn’t work’ to all kinds of technical detail about why if I can get to the right people.”

Getting it to the right people is key. Another part of equivalent experience is handling feedback in a timely and constructive way, much as how you would with any other issue with your product or service.

Responding to an accessibility issue is easy:

Thank the person for taking the time and effort to report the issue.

Acknowledge the issue and identify what person or team will be handling it.

Ask clarifying questions as needed.

Offer potential workarounds, with the understanding that they’re only temporary until the underlying issue is addressed.

Offer to involve them in the process, including notifying them when the issue has been fixed.

Being open, honest, and transparent about your bug fixing process goes a long way to establishing trust in a population that has historically and routinely been overlooked.

Also know that assigning someone to mind an email address to conduct tasks on behalf of an assistive technology user is not an appropriate, effective, or sustainable solution. Remember the concerns surrounding autonomy discussed earlier.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Create an accessibility statement, including known issues, a tentative timeline for their fixes, and easy to discover contact information.

Ensure that anyone customer-facing (quality assurance, customer support, marketing agency, etc.) are trained on protocol for accessibility-related issue reporting.

Quantify accessibility-related issues, both internal and reported.

Be on the lookout for patterns and trends with discovered accessibility issues, as they represent learning opportunities.

Understand that not all platforms to collect feedback are created equal.

Motivation

We’ve covered actual people’s everyday frustrations, as well as civil rights and the current legal landscape. If these don’t motivate you, allow me to present another factor to consider: profit.

There are two provoking studies I’d like to call attention to, but they are by no means the only studies performed in this space.

(Large preview)

First is the Click Away Pound Survey, a survey conducted in both 2016 and 2019 to “explore the online shopping experience of people with disabilities and examine the cost to business of ignoring disabled shoppers.”

The survey discovered that more than 4 million people abandoned a retail website because of the access barriers they found. These people represent 17.1 billion pounds (~$21.1 billion USD) in lost potential revenue.

Second is the The Purchasing Power of Working-Age Adults With Disabilities (PDF), conducted in 2018 by the American Institutes for Research. This study discovered that there is an estimated $490 billion in disposable income amongst disabled working-age adults. That’s billion with a capital B.

There are two of the (many) takeaways from these studies I’d like to highlight:

First is that from a historical perspective, the web is still very much new. On top of that, its ubiquity is even more recent, meaning that use by the general population is a small sliver of the amount of time it’s been around.

Second is that the general population contains many people who are disabled, and that their needs are not being met. These unmet needs represent billions of dollars of potential revenue.

This is a gigantic market that we, as an industry, are only now becoming aware of. Rather than approaching accessibility with a mindset of risk aversion, why not use this learning as a great way to view your current and future business opportunities?

Complying with the ADA is by definition the legally required minimum for accessibility. It doesn’t account for a good user experience, usability, and innovation. Unless you strive for the minimum all the time, compliance is not enough.https://t.co/qOYw6ji23u

— mikey is at home (@mikeyil) March 5, 2020

Let’s Not Stop Here

Too often we think of accessibility as a problem to be solved, rather than a way of looking at the world. Equivalent experiences necessitate that we question our assumptions and biases and think about experiences outside of our own. It can be an uncomfortable thing to think about at first, but it’s all in the service of making things usable for all.

As web professionals, it is our job, and our privilege to ensure that the experiences we deliver are equivalent. In the second part, we’ll investigate how to do just that.

Further Reading

“WCAG Primer,” Tetra Logical

“The Web Accessibility Basics,” Marco Zehe’s Accessibility Blog

“Web Accessibility Checklist: 15 Things To Improve Your Website Accessibility,” WebsiteSetup.org

“The Importance Of Manual Accessibility Testing: Call The Professionals,” Eric Bailey, Smashing Magazine

“Taking Accessibility Beyond Compliance,” Dennis Deacon, 24 Accessibility

“Videos Of People With Disabilities Using Tech,” Hampus Sethfors, Axess Lab

“Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore The Impact And Benefits For Everyone,” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), W3C

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/619383176177090560

[scpie]

Equivalent Experiences: What Are They?

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

An equivalent experience is one that has been deliberately conceived of and built to be able to be used by the widest possible range of people. To create an equivalent experience, you must understand all the different ways people interact with technology, as well as common barriers they experience.

If you spend enough time interacting with digital accessibility practitioners, you may encounter the phrase “equivalent experience.” This saying concisely sums up a lot of the philosophy behind accessibility work.

Our industry tends to place a lot of focus on how, often at the expense of why. For accessibility-related concerns, it is vital to learn about the history, and lived experiences of disabled people as a context for understanding the need for design and code created with access in mind.

This is the first of two articles on the topic of equivalency, and how it relates to digital accessibility. It will help us define what an equivalent experience is. Once we have a common understanding established, I’ll then discuss how to go about implementing equivalent experiences for common accessibility-related issues.

The State Of Things

The truth of the matter is that even though we live in a multi-device world full of smartphones, augmented reality, voice assistants, and IoT smart sensors, our default is still predominately:

Visual,

large screen,

fast connection,

powerful computer and display,

male,

white,

wealthy,

young,

Western,

technologically-literate,

and abled.

This is reflective of the biases that are inherent in how we design, develop and grow products.

The previous list may not be the most comfortable thing to read. If you haven’t closed the browser tab already, take a moment to consider your daily workflows, as well as who your coworkers are, and you’ll begin to understand what I’m getting at.

At its core, delivering an equivalent experience is ultimately about preserving intent — with the intent being the motivating force behind creating a website or web app and all the content and features it contains.

This translates to making the meaning behind every interaction, every component, every photo or illustration, every line of code being understandable by the widest range of people, regardless of their device or ability.

Prior Art

I’m not the first person to discuss this topic (and hopefully not the last). Speaker, trainer, and consultant Nicolas Steenhout is one such advocate. His great post, Accessibility is about people, not standards, is well worth reading.

If you’re the kind of person who is into podcasts, his A11y Rules has a wonderful series called Soundbites. It features “short discussions with people with disabilities about the barriers they encounter on the web.” These insightful interviews also touch on what this article discusses.

What Isn’t An Equivalent Experience?

Showing examples of what something is not can be a way to help define it. For equivalent experiences, an example would be a web app geared towards use by the general public not having a mobile breakpoint.

It’s not difficult to imagine a situation where I’d want to adjust my work benefits while on the go. (Large preview)

With this example, everyone using a device with a small display is forced to pinch, pan, and zoom to get what they need. Here, the burden is placed on anyone whose only crime was using a smartphone.

Most likely, whoever conceived of, designed, and developed this didn’t stop to think about circumstances other than their own. In this sort of (unfortunately still all too common) scenario, I all but guarantee that the web app looks great on the laptops or desktops of the designers and developers who made it.

A designer saying, “it has enough contrast for me and my ‘old’ eyes” is the same as when a dev says, “works on my machine.”

The thing is though, we don’t design or develop for ourselves.

So, are we really ok with saying, “you don’t matter” to folks who are not like us? #a11y

— Heather (@_hmig) December 19, 2019

People using a smartphone to access this website are victims of circumstance. The extra effort someone needs to do to get it to work indirectly communicates that they weren’t a priority, and therefore not valued. If you’ve used the web for any significant portion of time, I’m willing to bet this, or a similar experience has happened to you.

This example is also a hop, skip, and a jump away from another common, yet serious accessibility issue we often don’t consider: screen zooming:

Screen Zooming

Screen zooming is when someone is prevented from being able to zoom their displays and make text larger—many native mobile apps are guilty of this. When you disallow this sort of behavior, you’re telling prospective users that unless they have vision similar to you, you aren’t interested in them being able to use your app.

For this scenario, a gentle reminder that we will all get older, and with aging comes a whole host of vision-related concerns. A question you should be asking yourself is if your future self will be capable of using the things your present self is making. A follow-up question is if you’re also asking the people you’re managing this.

I just had my eyes dilated, so I can’t read any text that isn’t comically large. I don’t know how to use a screen reader. I’ll be fine in a few hours, but this has been a fascinating journey into how well third-party iOS apps respect text size accessibility settings!

(Thread)

— Em Lazer-Walker (@lazerwalker) January 29, 2020

Accessible Experiences Aren’t Necessarily Equivalent Ones

This might be a little difficult of a concept to grasp at first. Let’s use this Rube Goldberg machine made by Joseph Herscher to pass the pepper to his dinner guest to compare:

[embedded content]

To pass the pepper, the machine, sends it through an elaborate system of weights, counterweights, ramps, rolling objects, catapults, guillotines, burners, timers, carousels, etc. — all constructed from commonly found kitchen items. While this setup will technically ensure the pepper is passed, it is an annoying, overwrought, time-intensive process.

Many digital experiences are a lot like a Rube Goldberg machine when it comes to accessibility. Since accessibility issues are so prevalent, many forms of assistive technology provide a large suite of features to allow their user to work around common obstacles.

Unfortunately, discovering obstacles, and then figuring out and activating the appropriate combination of features to overcome them can take a disproportionate amount of time and effort.

To say it another way: A simple click on a button for an abled person may take far more time and effort for a disabled person, depending on how the button has been made.

Chilling Effects

Frustratingly, the extra time and effort a disabled person has to put into operating a technically accessible experience may feed back into their disability condition(s). For example, the presence of a motor control disability such as arthritis may make the overall experience even more taxing.

Cognitive accessibility concerns are also another important thing to consider. What may seem easy to understand or intuitive to use for one person may not be for another. This is especially prevalent in situations where there is:

Cognitive accessibility isn’t an abstract concern, either. Poor user interface design that ignores the circumstances of the end user and dumps too much cognitive load onto them can have very real, very serious consequences.

The military is full of examples of poor interfaces being forced on people who don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s also one of the origins of Inclusive Design thinking. (Large preview)

Compounding Effects

These factors are not mutually exclusive. Proponents of Spoon Theory know that inaccessible experiences conspire to sap a person’s mental and physical energy, leaving them exhausted and demotivated. Worse, these sorts of scenarios are often more than just a person perpetually operating at a diminished capacity.

Frustrating digital experiences can lead to a person abandoning them outright, internalizing the system’s fault as their own personal failure. This abandonment may also translate to a person’s willingness and ability to operate other digital interfaces. In other words: the more we turn people away, the more they’ll stop trying to show up.

“Nobody has complained before” is a silly excuse for not caring about accessibility. You’re right, they didn’t complain. They left.

— Vote blue, no matter who. (@karlgroves) December 8, 2018

Don’t Take My Word For It

To make the abstract immediate, I reached out on Twitter to ask people about their experiences using assistive technology to browse the web.

I also took a purposely loose definition of assistive technology. All-too-often we assume the term “accessible” only means “works in a screen reader.” The truth of the matter is that assistive technology is so much more than that.

The way the web is built — its foundational principles and behaviors — make it extraordinarily adaptable. It’s us, the people who build on and for the web, who break that. By failing to consider these devices and methods of interacting with web content, we implicitly drift further away from equivalency.

Consistency

For some, assistive technology can mean specialized browser extensions. These micro-apps are used to enhance, augment, and customize a browsing experience to better suit someone’s needs.

Damien Senger, digital designer, uses a browser extension called Midnight Lizard to enforce a similar experience across multiple websites. This helps them “to focus on the content directly and to limit having too big differences between websites. It is also helping me to avoid too harsh color contrasts that are really uncomfortable.“

Damien also writes, “Often websites are really difficult to read for me because either of the lack of consistency in the layout, too narrow lines or just not enough balance between font size and line height. Related to that, color can create a lot of unhelpful distraction and I am struggling when too harsh contrast is nearby text.”

How To Maintain Equivalency

In addition, Damien also augments their browsing experience by using ad blocking technology “not only for ads but to block animations or content that are too distracting for my ADHD.”

It’s not too difficult to imagine why distracting and annoying your users is a bad idea. In the case of ads, the industry is unregulated, meaning that rules to prohibit ADHD, migraine, and/or seizure-triggering animations aren’t honored. Through this lens, an ad blocker is a form of consumer self-defense.

I’ll say it again: Telling users their access isn’t as important as your bottom line is a BAD take. Ads are fine as long as they don’t create a barrier by moving! #ADHD #A11y #PSH #WCAG https://t.co/i6mifI0JRE

— Shell Little (@ShellELittle) February 27, 2020

Kenny Hitt also chimes in about ads: “…regardless of the platform, the thing that annoys me most are websites with ads that essentially cause the site to constantly auto update. This prevents me as a screen reader user from reading the content of those websites.”

Again, a lack of regulation means the user must take measures into their own hands to keep the experience equivalent.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Opportunity

A lack of an equivalent experience translates directly to lost opportunity. Many individuals I spoke with mentioned that they’d abandon a digital experience that was inaccessible more often than not.

Brian Moore mentions, “there are web sites where I like their products a lot but won’t buy them because the site itself is such a struggle, and attempts to reach out have met with either silence or resistance to taking any action.”

Brian cites the Fluance website as the most recent example. The bugs present in its shopping user flows prevents him from buying high-end consumer audio equipment.

Fluance’s entire web presence exists to sell products. While updating a website or web app to be accessible can be an effort-intensive process, it would definitely be in Fluance’s best interest to make sure its checkout user flow is as robust as it could be.

Those lost sales add up. (Large preview)

Opportunity isn’t limited to just e-commerce, either. As more and more services digitize, we paradoxically push more people out of being to live in the society that relies on these digitized services—people with protected rights. Again, this shift away from an equivalent experience is the culprit.

Justin Yarbrough was “applying for an accessibility-related job with the Arizona Department of Economic Security over the summer, where they wanted me to take an assessment. The button to start the assessment was a clickable div. They wound up waving the assessment requirement for the position.”

Jim Kiely tells me about his brother, who “has stopped paying his water bill online because the city water website [doesn’t] work well with a screen reader and high contrast.”

Personally, I have friends who have been prevented from submitting résumés to multiple sites because their job application portals were inaccessible.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Adaptability

Soren Hamby, product marketing agency manager and design advocate, writes of their experiences using screen magnification software and screen reading capabilities. Soren has “varying levels of vision so [they] tend to not always need the same level of accommodation.”

Of note, Soren mentions their struggles with grocery delivery apps, specifically “the carts often only read the quantities rather than the item name. It’s much easier to order with a sighted person.”

There are three things to consider here:

First is the surface-level acknowledgment that the app operates differently for different people, the main point this article is driving at.

Second is the fact that Soren uses multiple forms of assistive technology, with the mix a shifting combination depending on a combination of their task at hand and how well the digital interface meets their access needs.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Make sure that the labels for your interactive controls are relevant and concise.

Incorporate disability scenarios and conditions into your design personas.

Avoid using absolute length units. (No, seriously.)

Avoid setting maximum widths and heights.

Avoid using fixed and sticky-scrolling components, especially larger-sized ones.

Test your layouts by zooming and/or increasing your default type size to make sure that content does not get obscured.

This brings us to our third and most important point:

Autonomy

Having to rely on the help of a sighted person to order groceries is not ideal. For many, the acquiring, preparation, and consuming of food can be highly personal acts. Being forced to incorporate outside assistance into this process is far different than willingly inviting someone in to share an experience. The same notion applies to every other digital product, as well.

Kenny also mentions grocery apps: “…my local Kroger grocery store has started an app redesign in June 2019 that is breaking accessibility with their app.” In discussing this regression, he goes on to elaborate, “Because I can’t financially change to another business, I won’t let it drop. Kroger is going to discover that I don’t stop with a problem. Persistence in solving problems is a requirement for any disabled person if you want to succeed in the world.”

This app looks great, provided you can see it. (Large preview)

Equality

Kroger would be wise to listen to Kenny’s feedback. The grocery company Winn-Dixie was recently successfully sued for not being operable with a screen reader. The lawsuit argued that the grocer’s website was heavily integrated with their physical stores, and therefore violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Another recent case involves the Domino’s Pizza franchise. Taken all the way to the Supreme Court, the ruling clearly and unambiguously states that preventing someone from using a website or app, simply because they used screen reading software, is unconstitutional.

For both cases, the cost to implement fixes were far cheaper than going to court—something to think about the next time you’re deciding where to order pizza.

Despite some ugly misconceptions about the ruling, the evidence is clear: in the United States, there is now legal precedent for private companies to be sued for violating civil rights via an inaccessible digital experience. Europe and some parts of Asia have similar laws, as well.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Reactivity

Another way to maintain an equivalent experience — one that is often not thought about — is to give reports about accessibility issues the same weight and concern as other software bugs.

Reported accessibility issues are oftentimes downplayed and ignored, or are sent to someone ignorant of the issue and/or powerless to fix it.

Kenny, who started using a computer with a screen reader in 1984 says, “When I run into accessibility issues nowadays, I’ll try reporting it, when I get the usual response from the feedback of the person not caring, I just give up and walk away. If [the response] comes from somebody in marketing agency who doesn’t understand accessibility, I just give up and go away. There’s no point in trying to teach these people about accessibility.”

Kenny’s view is shared by many others in the disability community. Remember what I said about compounding effects earlier.

Brian reports that,

“If I find significant issues with a site, I do report it. Depending on who I talk to it ranges from ‘here’s what doesn’t work’ to all kinds of technical detail about why if I can get to the right people.”

Getting it to the right people is key. Another part of equivalent experience is handling feedback in a timely and constructive way, much as how you would with any other issue with your product or service.

Responding to an accessibility issue is easy:

Thank the person for taking the time and effort to report the issue.

Acknowledge the issue and identify what person or team will be handling it.

Ask clarifying questions as needed.

Offer potential workarounds, with the understanding that they’re only temporary until the underlying issue is addressed.

Offer to involve them in the process, including notifying them when the issue has been fixed.

Being open, honest, and transparent about your bug fixing process goes a long way to establishing trust in a population that has historically and routinely been overlooked.

Also know that assigning someone to mind an email address to conduct tasks on behalf of an assistive technology user is not an appropriate, effective, or sustainable solution. Remember the concerns surrounding autonomy discussed earlier.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Create an accessibility statement, including known issues, a tentative timeline for their fixes, and easy to discover contact information.

Ensure that anyone customer-facing (quality assurance, customer support, marketing agency, etc.) are trained on protocol for accessibility-related issue reporting.

Quantify accessibility-related issues, both internal and reported.

Be on the lookout for patterns and trends with discovered accessibility issues, as they represent learning opportunities.

Understand that not all platforms to collect feedback are created equal.

Motivation

We’ve covered actual people’s everyday frustrations, as well as civil rights and the current legal landscape. If these don’t motivate you, allow me to present another factor to consider: profit.

There are two provoking studies I’d like to call attention to, but they are by no means the only studies performed in this space.

(Large preview)

First is the Click Away Pound Survey, a survey conducted in both 2016 and 2019 to “explore the online shopping experience of people with disabilities and examine the cost to business of ignoring disabled shoppers.”

The survey discovered that more than 4 million people abandoned a retail website because of the access barriers they found. These people represent 17.1 billion pounds (~$21.1 billion USD) in lost potential revenue.

Second is the The Purchasing Power of Working-Age Adults With Disabilities (PDF), conducted in 2018 by the American Institutes for Research. This study discovered that there is an estimated $490 billion in disposable income amongst disabled working-age adults. That’s billion with a capital B.

There are two of the (many) takeaways from these studies I’d like to highlight:

First is that from a historical perspective, the web is still very much new. On top of that, its ubiquity is even more recent, meaning that use by the general population is a small sliver of the amount of time it’s been around.

Second is that the general population contains many people who are disabled, and that their needs are not being met. These unmet needs represent billions of dollars of potential revenue.

This is a gigantic market that we, as an industry, are only now becoming aware of. Rather than approaching accessibility with a mindset of risk aversion, why not use this learning as a great way to view your current and future business opportunities?

Complying with the ADA is by definition the legally required minimum for accessibility. It doesn’t account for a good user experience, usability, and innovation. Unless you strive for the minimum all the time, compliance is not enough.https://t.co/qOYw6ji23u

— mikey is at home (@mikeyil) March 5, 2020

Let’s Not Stop Here

Too often we think of accessibility as a problem to be solved, rather than a way of looking at the world. Equivalent experiences necessitate that we question our assumptions and biases and think about experiences outside of our own. It can be an uncomfortable thing to think about at first, but it’s all in the service of making things usable for all.

As web professionals, it is our job, and our privilege to ensure that the experiences we deliver are equivalent. In the second part, we’ll investigate how to do just that.

Further Reading

“WCAG Primer,” Tetra Logical

“The Web Accessibility Basics,” Marco Zehe’s Accessibility Blog

“Web Accessibility Checklist: 15 Things To Improve Your Website Accessibility,” WebsiteSetup.org

“The Importance Of Manual Accessibility Testing: Call The Professionals,” Eric Bailey, Smashing Magazine

“Taking Accessibility Beyond Compliance,” Dennis Deacon, 24 Accessibility

“Videos Of People With Disabilities Using Tech,” Hampus Sethfors, Axess Lab

“Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore The Impact And Benefits For Everyone,” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), W3C

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they/

[theseventhhex]

Empara Mi Interview

Empara Mi

Photo by Eva Pentel

Give Empara Mi an opportunity and she'll excel. Truly an enigmatic virtual prodigy, Empara Mi’s versatile and striking realm of creativity is remarkably innovative and laced with musical eccentricities. Continuously transforming genre with appealing advancement, Empara Mi’s latest single ‘Alibi’ embodies a bold and striking sonic statement – with moments of sheer intensity and vocal authority. Devoted to constant studio time, honing her craft and refining her sound, Empara Mi’s ambitious outlook, unique exuberance and steely resolve will surely hold in her in good stead for future undertakings and further plaudits… The Seventh Hex talks to Empara Mi about self-doubt, horror movies and lying outside at night…

TSH: Being a very visual driven artist, does this aspect aid you in particular when new music is being formulated?

Empara Mi: You know, I just go with the flow. If I have an intention to sit down and write a song, then that’s what I’ll do. I don’t think that you have to necessarily be driven or mega-focused to write new music. But yeah, like you said, I do think visually a lot, which is why a lot of the time when I sit down and write, I think of the video first. I normally have this feeling of what I want to create, then the words will follow and the whole thing starts to make sense. I generally have a solid idea of what I want with visuals too. It just becomes a case of merging my ideas with others and hoping for a positive outcome.

TSH: Self-doubt is a factor that often comes into play with your chosen subject matter...

Empara Mi: Yeah, that’s true. You know, this direction wasn’t subconscious until I got asked to explain what my songs mean. However, it lead me to figuring out that there is quite a prominent theme in my music of me feeling self-doubt and like I need to break out of something. I guess it comes from being young and growing up somewhere else, as well as leaving home at an early age. I left home when I was 15 and went out by myself to try and discover what was going on. Overall, my songs do consist of wanting to discover another world, all the while having the ability to overcome the doubters who say you cannot achieve your aims.

TSH: Do your surroundings seep into your musical endeavours?

Empara Mi: It’s weird because my surroundings are changing all of the time. Growing up in Guernsey, we didn’t have a music scene or a culture there, so I listened to whatever I wanted. It was a case of just kind of merging genres of music and making whatever you wanted. I’m constantly moving and I’ve never settled. I’ve never had a home here in England; I just move around from spot to spot and end up in various areas of London. Also, I don’t know why, but I have this Americana dreamlike thing that I love to put into everything, even though I’ve never lived in America, ha!

TSH: Is your vocal direction freeform or do you have intentions in mind?

Empara Mi: It’s all very much in the moment. I write 90% of my material in my bedroom and I have my mics set up around me. I just record whatever I’m thinking and feeling. There’s not much thought going into it, and a lot of the time, I end up with the original demo vocals. There’s always something about the first take that is so raw and real, so I don’t like to change this element, even though the quality can be a little iffy. You can’t really replicate the feeling you have when you’re originally doing something, besides I can’t act or mimic a feeling, therefore I stick with the first take most often.

TSH: Do you recall how you settled on the visual aesthetics and origins of ‘Alibi?

Empara Mi: Well, everyone was like how the fuck did you come up with that video?! It doesn’t necessary make sense during one’s first watch. And this is because the lyrics are quite odd alongside the bondage stuff - it doesn’t really connect. Also, some people have got the idea of the song distorted. Some people think ‘Alibi’ is about a past lover and getting revenge, but it’s actually about a battle with yourself. The song is in relation to the voices in the back of your head telling you that you’re not good enough and in turn overcoming these types of feelings.

TSH: What was the trickiest part in forming ’Alibi’?

Empara Mi: It was a very difficult song to finish. The song slows down to 20BPM by the chorus, which was absolute hell to achieve. I wrote the song on guitar and had this vision of the song sounding really grand and Tarantino-esque. I basically sent the framework for the song to Kanye West’s producer Andrew Dawson. It turned out, he really liked it, so I flew out to the States and we both ended up spending a lot of time on it to get to just right. I had like 20 different versions of that song!

TSH: What does a track like ‘Spoon’ convey to you?

Empara Mi: It’s one of my favourite tracks that I’ve done to this day. It’s weird because I’m not really singing on it; instead I’m doing this odd rap thing. That track was all about capturing a moment in time, it also touches on life and death, but I don’t think anyone picked up in that. For me, it brings to mind how one would live their life if they knew it was going to end.

TSH: How rewarding is it for you to know that each day revolves around you being creative and doing something that you’re passionate about?

Empara Mi: It’s amazing and I really do love it. Although, I have to say that I’ve had to learn how to appreciate this line of work, which wasn’t the case in the very beginning. Early on, I had so many hopes for how I wanted things to happen, but now I’ve taken a more laidback approach. I do what I want, and if it works, it works. You know, when I first started making music, I just wanted to be so perfect, haha! Maybe I was slightly naive, since I thought a lot about how I’d be received. However, the moment you stop thinking this way, that’s when everything becomes a lot more satisfying, a lot clearer and more enjoyable. Nowadays, I spend so much time in the studio and I don’t leave until late. I simply love challenging myself to feel satisfied with my work...

TSH: The ultimate satisfaction is to eventually have your music in a Tarantino movie...

Empara Mi: Haha! Pretty much! That’s would be an incredible achievement.

TSH: Has your father’s fondness for Eminem and hip-hop died down over the years?

Empara Mi: No, he still does love Eminem very much! My dad just loves hip-hop in general. Each time I get in the car with him, we have a row over which CD to play, haha!

TSH: Is it true that you won’t sleep until you’ve seen a horror movie?

Empara Mi: Oh, yes! I love my horror movies! I saw The Exorcist again last night. Also, I went to see IT the other day, and I didn’t find it scary at all! I thought it was more of a comedy actually. But yeah, each day I have to watch a horror movie, which reminds me, I watched the entire Scream franchise again last week too. I guess I just love scaring the shit out of myself, haha!

TSH: Your love for dogs is also very apparent on your social media?

Empara Mi: Ha! I just love dogs. Maybe I’m being soppy, but they are just so loving and loyal. I think I’m one of those crazy dog persons! My Instagram and all of my feeds are flooded with dog selfies. I tend to bring the dog to the studio often too.

TSH: Does constantly being immersed in music help you to achieve a positive headspace?

Empara Mi: Yes, music helps me to feel positivity more than most things. Having said that, I do have this obsession of lying outside at night by myself and looking at the sky. It’s a weird thing that I do, but it really makes me feel smaller than I am and puts everything into perspective. Whenever I get stressed about something, I just remember how small I am and that nothing really matters. I guess this type of attitude helps to keep me in check and makes me feel content too.

TSH: What sort of opportunities are you relishing as you look ahead to next year?

Empara Mi: I feel like I’m building towards something very hopeful. I’m currently sitting on over 60 songs. My next step is going to be quite the leap: I’m no longer going to release little things each time. I mean I love my interludes, but they are not what people can really latch on to. The interludes are just snippets of a wider context of material. I want to put out a proper visual album next year. I have many singles completed and visuals/short films in mind to accompany them. I’m just really excited to share more material. And in the meantime, I’ll continue to explore further concepts that I have in mind.

Empara Mi - “Alibi”

Alibi - Single