Nerdy PSA at hope's journal is a great post on how to make your website or blog more accessible using basic HTML.

One of my big pet peeves that I see people do quite frequently, is hyperlink to things without describing what they are linking to.

For example,
BAD:

I am reading this right now!

GOOD:

I am reading The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm by Nancy Farmer right now.

I don't want to have to click on your link just to find out what the heck you are talking about. It's irritating. And I'm not trying to pick on any one person here, because I have seen at least two dozen people do variations of this problem. Sometimes for creative reasons, like using "ZOMG" as their hyperlink label when they are excited. But that is just as bad. As hope points out, for someone using a screen reader, when they hear "ZOMG" or "here" that is not very helpful for knowing where the link goes. I TOO FIND IT ANNOYING. (And I'm not holding this against you personally! It's just a part of blogging culture that I want to shift.)

----

Also Access related, bibliofile, goblingirl and I were talking about con-related access things the other day, and bibliofile had this idea of making a Con Access Wiki. Something that everyone could read, with centralized information for how to do access at a con. Probably it would have to have restricted editing privileges. But the centralization would be nice, so that each con did not have to re-invent the wheel. And it would reduce barriers because you wouldn't have to know who to talk to to find things out, or get over your social anxiety to do so.

What do you guys think? Just an idea I'm pondering. Cons in this case means both conventions and conferences.

Passing this along:

http://mariness.livejournal.com/818969.html


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For Compare and Contrast,
WisCon's Accessibility Inclusion Statement is here.

If you have specific questions about Access at WisCon, or want to chat about how to make your own favorite convention more accessible, please email access34@wiscon.info.

This was a discussion rather than a panel; facilitated by Juliana. These are my somewhat disorganized notes. Feel free to point out any errors, or make any additions in comments. Sometimes I just wrote down authors or titles without any context!

*Buffy-verse: all the Slayers are female. I mentioned a fanfic I heard of, where a Slayer transitions to male but keeps his powers.

*Temeraire books by Naomi Novik. The Longwing dragons only choose female riders, but how do we know how the author is defining male and female? Maybe *most* of the Longwings choose female riders, but the occasional one wouldn't, and that might be regarded like queerness is in our culture. Someone also mentioned a fanfic dealing with a trans rider (FtM I think) who was supposed to inherit a Longwing. Also the dragons seem to think less about gender than the people do.

*A Companion to Wolves by Monette and Bear
*Babel 17 by Samuel Delaney</i>
*Glass House by Charles Strauss
*Cetaganda and Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold
*Xenogenesis books by Octavia Butler
*The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
*The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
*Richard K. Morgan
*"Torch of Honor" or perhaps the sequel--switching gender
*Grant Morrison's "The Invisisbles" (comics)
*Terry Goodkin (faily) binary magical powers between men and women
*Dune - the Bene Gesserit have secret powers around reproduction, but their ultimate goal is still male power
*China Mieville's books: the Kepri have a large division between male and female. The females are sentient and the males are basically cockroackes.
*Terry Pratchett - male and female dwarves looks the same. Monstous Regiment and Men at Arms were mentioned, but there are many Discworld books.
*Emma Bull, Finder
*Laurie Marks, the "Logic" books. Women and men are truly equal in these books, seen as soldiers and farmers and co-parents.
*Scott Sigler
*The concept of covens vs. singular male wizards. Or if male wizards are in a group, they are a secret society trying to do harm of some kind.
*Gate to Women's Country (faily, gender-essentialist)
*I ranted about my loathing for the "Hominid" trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer. They have some cool interesting concepts (all the Neanderthals are bisexual), but do a lot of gender-essentialist things and want to address the "problem of male violence".

*Star Trek. The trill are genderless, but have the experiences of male and female hosts. Some species use pheromones to control men, which is the ultimate sexual power.

*Transformers - why are they all male? Why can't they just TRANSFORM into female?

*Godzilla is female in the newest movie adaptation

*AIs as gendered vs. gender-neutral

Overall, I thought this was a very good discussion! Good depth.

Look at this fucking hotel room! It is like a fucking cruise-liner spaceship in the Fifth Element! Ruby Red is going to show up any moment!

( cut for pictures )