2013 Year in Review

It was a steady (but relatively slower) year for Web Axe. Besides some blogging, I managed 2 podcasts, Twittered a lot, and maintained the Facebook page. All-in-all 2013 was a great year, with more than enough things to review; here are some:

• 2013 was the year of the successful Easy Chirp 2 Kickstarter campaign and the (soft) relaunch of Easy Chip 2 beta website (if you didn’t know, I also am the creator/developer of Easy Chirp).
• For the first time in person, it was a pleasure to meet Greg Kraus and Kathy Wahlbin at Accessing Higher Ground and Chris Coyier at the CSS Developer Conference.
• The rise of the accessibility of WordPress.
• Representing my day job, I spoke at several events including the Boston Accessibility Conference and CSUN13 (and looking forward to CSUN14!) And for the first time, I spoke at the online Accessibility Summit and the CSS Developer Conference.
• Discovered great folks such as @LauraKalbag; check out her terrific blog Why Bother with Accessibility? And @ScottKellum, read his blog Accessibility isn’t a buzzword, it’s personal.
• Sticking to basics was a theme for me this year including blog posts Keep the Underline and Links: Don’t “Click Here”. In the social media, I was shocked and disappointed in having to argue for progressive enhancement.
• Lots of accessibility jobs created/available especially with large companies such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Comcast, and now Yahoo. I do blog and tweet these so if you or anyone you know is looking, give me a follow.
• A few extra-special links from 2013:
  • Hitting the accessibility high notes with ARIA (by @Ted_Drake)
  • Accessibility evaluation for web writers (by @Writing4Web)
  • HTML5 accessibility (presentation video, @SteveFaulkner)
  • Designing with Empathy (slideshare by @AaronGustafson)
  • How Designers Destroyed the World (presentation video)

Do you have anything special to share from this past year?