E086 – Interview with Christopher Schmitt – Part 1

Christopher says that for someone who likes Design so much, he didn't realize how important good color contrast was, and how bad color contrast issues are. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at: Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/ Transcript Nic:    Welcome to the Accessibility Rules Podcast. This is episode 86. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another with web accessibility. If you’re interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS, and video at Twilio.com. This week I’m speaking with Christopher Schmitt. Thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility, Christopher. How are ya? Christopher:    I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. How are you doing? Nic:    I’m doing good. We’ve been talking a lot on Slack through work and Twitter and all that but it’s good to have a dedicated discussion about accessibility and your background and interest in it. I like to let guests introduce themselves, so in a brief intro… who is Christopher Schmitt? Christopher:    I am a designer, developer, author, speaker, event organizer, and beginning the accessibility work. I guess that's… it’s pretty… there’s a lot around. It’s pretty good. Nic:    With all that do you have time to sleep? Christopher:    No… I do not sleep at all, no. Nic:    You do not sleep (laughing). Right...okay. So, you’re a little bit like a vampire then. Christopher:    Yes. Nic:    Yeah. Hey, um… let’s get warmed up. Tell me one thing that most people would not know about you. Christopher:    I…. What would you think would be interesting… um… I… I don’t know. I’m a semi-secret Disneyphile. I like things about… I guess the parks of Disney. I guess that’s part of it. I like the theme parks and I like… I guess it kind of goes back to my family when my parents… my mom was a math teacher and my dad was a computer engineer. And so… and I had a big family and we lived in Florida so we would go to Disney a lot. And, we would go to Disney in a really strange way in which… I’m not sure how my parents got this… made this happen, but we would sit down the day before we would go to Disney and we would just map out the route of what everyone wanted to do. What all the kids wanted to do. We actually had a mutual understanding of what rides we wanted to do. Nic:    Right Christopher:    Then we would just conquer Disney that day and then it’s only later when I would go to see with other friends… they wanted the whole experience, you know? They wanted to go over here and see bands or see all of these side attractions and I’m like, no… it’s not the rides. But anyway… I lived in Orlando for a little bit and I used to go to the parks a lot during that time…. Nic:    Right… yeah. Okay, so… roller coasters… woodies or metals? Christopher:    I prefer with woodies, personally. But I do like how crazy metals can get. But there’s nothing more nerve-wracking than getting on a wooden roller coaster. I think that’s part of the edge. Nic:    I’m in favor of wooden roller coasters as well … but anyway. Hey, we are talking about web accessibility, not coasters… how would you define web accessibility? Christopher:    That’s a good question. I would probably define it as making… in terms of web, I would define it as making anything you put on the web open to everyone to use. Nic:    Okay, so… make sure everything on the web is usable by everyone. Christopher:    Right. Pretty much. Nic:    Yeah. I like that because it doesn’t limit you to just people with disabilities or