Historica11y is all about the history of web, digital and technological accessibility.

I’m Olu! I’m a front end developer and writer in the UK. I’m AuDHD and have other mental health conditions (I tend to call myself mad, in the way that mad scholars and activists use it), and use text to speech sporadically to often depending on whether I’m having a brain fog kind of day.

Accessibility has been a fascination of mine since I first learnt how inaccessible the internet was, given how much I love it as a medium, meeting place, and knowledge vehicle, and how much it has changed the world. Working in several places that let me work as an accessibility champion or do accessibility focused work as part of my job in other ways opened my eyes to the challenges of the work and the uphill struggle against willfully ignoring these problems.

I’ve written a piece for A List Apart about inaccessibility of many kinds and how it keeps people off the internet. However, I have long wondered why the accessibility innovators and activists who have got us where we are now (and know where we need to get to!) haven’t gotten their flowers or been documented in the same way the history of the web itself has been.

This is my attempt to address that, and to create both a timeline and series of documents about how web accessibility came to be. Along the way I’ve already decided that more general digital and technological accessibility should also be included in this account, so I have a lot of ground to cover!

As always, if you know (or are!) someone who you think I should talk to about web/digital/technological accessibility, or you know of any resources or organisations i should have a look at, please feel free to reply to any of my emails, or contact me on Twitter or Mastodon.

I’m so excited to be taking you all on this journey, and I hope you’re excited to learn more.

Historica11y is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe to Historica11y

The history of web, digital and technological accessibility

People

Writer. Ethical Technologist. Creator.