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The fourth April Moon prompt is a picture of cobblestone. There's nothing special about these stones - they're not painted any colors, there aren't any cracked, broken, or uneven stones in the picture, and there's no other thing in the distance that might indicate context. The most unique feature for this set of otherwise the same is that it looks like the center stone has bird droppings on it. As inspiration goes, this one looks at first blush to be a dud.
Since May 1 was International Workers Day, I could talk about solidarity and how the United Nations says that trade unions are a human right, and how my own union and its bargained disciplinary process are probably what kept me from losing my job under the reign of the Capricious Manager, so everyone who works for a wage under someone should have those kinds of protections, and not subject to mysterious closures of their worksite for nonexistent reasons to prevent their organization into a collective bargaining unit.
May 1 was also Blogging Against Disablism day, but as a member of a privileged group, it seems a better idea for me to let people who have the experience talk about the ways that the rest of us can make things better. The cobblestone reminds me of places that use bricks in their crosswalks - probably as a visual effect or as a show of wealth or history in the town, but I wonder whether people who navigate by cane or chair users would find that kind of change to be good or useful, since brick isn't usually a fully smooth surface to move on.
Disability also makes me think about Section 508 of the ADA, which mandates that websites for government services or entities (like tax-funded libraries) have to be accessible to people using assistive technologies to browse the Web. I'm not sure what sort of testing we do on our own site, and I suspect that anyone who navigated to it and found it frustrating is not going to pen us a letter or email detailing all the things that we got wrong with the site. It's not their job to educate us, and the people in charge of the website may or may not actually be able to fix the problem.
Plus, since we buy our website components a lot of the time, there's no guarantee our developers will have implemented proper compatibility, either, even if we made it part of the request. Really, at some point, someone in the organization should use the website with assistive technology and see whether the experience is comparable to without. The mobile catalog is a pale shade of the normal one, so I don't have high hopes. Accessibility should be a thing for all of us.
The way the picture is taken, the cobblestone could also be roof tile, which brings up this of the costs of adulthood and home ownership, as re-roofing is expensive, and all the time I spent on collegiate summers painting houses, some of which is probably still visible in the very first few years of my journaling. Those summers were the ones where I got intimately familiar with either the hits of yesteryear or whatever was on the pop charts of the current year, and where I think it was a compliment to my work that the crew leader would put me on a wall of the house and say "All yours for this morning/afternoon". (You can see how having esteem issues cam complicate even things that should be simple.) Some of the engineering problems that had to be solved so that ladders and other things could be safely brought up and down onto different parts of the house and so that all the boards got painted were pretty complex.
It was a good way of spending a summer making money, but it, like much of my undergraduate, was marking time until I could get into professional school and start my intended career path. I'd like to think I chose wisely about that, at least, because the wait was a long one.
Since May 1 was International Workers Day, I could talk about solidarity and how the United Nations says that trade unions are a human right, and how my own union and its bargained disciplinary process are probably what kept me from losing my job under the reign of the Capricious Manager, so everyone who works for a wage under someone should have those kinds of protections, and not subject to mysterious closures of their worksite for nonexistent reasons to prevent their organization into a collective bargaining unit.
May 1 was also Blogging Against Disablism day, but as a member of a privileged group, it seems a better idea for me to let people who have the experience talk about the ways that the rest of us can make things better. The cobblestone reminds me of places that use bricks in their crosswalks - probably as a visual effect or as a show of wealth or history in the town, but I wonder whether people who navigate by cane or chair users would find that kind of change to be good or useful, since brick isn't usually a fully smooth surface to move on.
Disability also makes me think about Section 508 of the ADA, which mandates that websites for government services or entities (like tax-funded libraries) have to be accessible to people using assistive technologies to browse the Web. I'm not sure what sort of testing we do on our own site, and I suspect that anyone who navigated to it and found it frustrating is not going to pen us a letter or email detailing all the things that we got wrong with the site. It's not their job to educate us, and the people in charge of the website may or may not actually be able to fix the problem.
Plus, since we buy our website components a lot of the time, there's no guarantee our developers will have implemented proper compatibility, either, even if we made it part of the request. Really, at some point, someone in the organization should use the website with assistive technology and see whether the experience is comparable to without. The mobile catalog is a pale shade of the normal one, so I don't have high hopes. Accessibility should be a thing for all of us.
The way the picture is taken, the cobblestone could also be roof tile, which brings up this of the costs of adulthood and home ownership, as re-roofing is expensive, and all the time I spent on collegiate summers painting houses, some of which is probably still visible in the very first few years of my journaling. Those summers were the ones where I got intimately familiar with either the hits of yesteryear or whatever was on the pop charts of the current year, and where I think it was a compliment to my work that the crew leader would put me on a wall of the house and say "All yours for this morning/afternoon". (You can see how having esteem issues cam complicate even things that should be simple.) Some of the engineering problems that had to be solved so that ladders and other things could be safely brought up and down onto different parts of the house and so that all the boards got painted were pretty complex.
It was a good way of spending a summer making money, but it, like much of my undergraduate, was marking time until I could get into professional school and start my intended career path. I'd like to think I chose wisely about that, at least, because the wait was a long one.
