Access Matters

The post just previous to this one is dated Jan 22. What you don’t see is “2007.” That’s right 15 months ago. What happened to cause blogging to subside?

In January 2007, I changed jobs. No, it was not to a different employer, but my sixth or seventh unique job at the same employer, IBM. While I hade been doing accessibility work for a number of years, it was a secondary part of my work. That changed in January 2007 when I moved to IBM’s Human Ability and Accessibility Center.

Hurray! Full time accessibility work.

Well, … yes and no. There are pros and cons to everything. On the plus side, my primary work was assisting our Human Resources division with improving the accessibility characteristics of the applications they sponsor. Many are custom built by outside firms with specific areas of expertise (investment counseling, health care services, career guidance, etc.), and all of these applications are used on our intranet by upwards of 380,000 IBM employees. That audience has the typcical distribution of disabilities, and making these applications fully accessible was both very important and highly appreciated. That part of the job was very satisfying.

On the other hand, I had been eligible for retirement for many years already, and the lure of other activites was growing stronger day by day. Travel, visiting grandchildren, woodworking, boat building, and various forms of artwork were all singing their siren songs.

I gave into the temptations and retired from IBM at the end of 2007, after 41 years of amazing technological progress. Accessibility is still a very strong interest, but not likely one that will be associated with “employment” any time soon. Four months into it, I find that retirement suits me well. — April 2008

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 12:34 pm and is filed under articles. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.