#this is the base layer of daniel's personality that you need to understand. this might be my new favorite this is everything

[yesloulou]

Daniel does a little dance to entertain himself and Simon was Not Impressed™️ FP2, 2014 German Grand Prix 🇩🇪 | link via @annebd

[amrv-5]

My take (sorry for adding a ridiculously long essay onto your post OP, feel free to ignore) is that the answer is a complicated yes. More below the cut, ‘cause, god this is long I’m sorry.

So to ground that claim, I’ll start by saying that drift compatibility (in the first Pacific Rim, I have no interest in the weird retconning Uprising did with the concept of drift compatibility here) seems to be based mostly in the potential for two people to work in sync. We know that the potential of it can be gauged via sparring—Raleigh has that line “Remember, it’s about compatibility. It’s a dialogue, not a fight.”

To me, that explains Newt and Hermann’s drift compatibility later. We see over and over that those guys are intellectually/verbally sparring constantly, playing out old arguments, knowing precisely what the other is going to say before he says it. Even though they don’t always get along, and in fact lightly antagonize each other, they still understand each other. They can dialogue.

Which brings us to Hawkeye and BJ. Those guys can dialogue, too. Oh boy can they dialogue. Check out their first few scenes in Welcome to Korea. In the span of a few minutes the guys have already fallen into a few schemes together — passing Radar off as a corporal-captain using BJ’s bars, joking in code at each other, stealing a general’s jeep together. They fall into a rhythm of dialogue and action immediately. By the end of the episode it’s clear BJ’s completely aligned with Hawk (muddy, drunk, already mocking Frank, etc.).

I’ll concede that you can pass off a lot of that as plot pressure: WtK really needs us to get on board with BJ Hunnicutt, and get on board fast. Two of, like, five or six primary cast members are missing at this point, so Hawk (and the audience) have to see BJ and Hawkeye as compatible, or we might bail on the season entirely.

But that sort of immediate sense of connection stays on through the season. BJ and Hawkeye build a bar memorial to Henry in the next episode. By “The Late Captain Pierce,” Daniel calls BJ, not Potter, the camp CO, for information about his son’s ‘death.’ BJ knows Hawk well enough by that point to silently sense when Hawkeye’s mood dips at the party. Not to mention their ridiculously constant wordplay. They pick up each other’s jokes, finish each other’s punchlines. Also a sitcom dialogue convention (nobody talks like that) but, like, come on. If drift potential is based on dialogue compatibility, these guys nearly never miss a beat with each other.

That’s my ‘yes’ justification. My ‘but it’s complicated’ followup is based on the fact that drifting also according to the first movie relies on openness — willingness to let somebody into your head. I think this might be tough for both Hawk and BJ to a point, in different ways.

We know Hawk canonically has trouble prioritizing people over work. He’s not always the best at being present in that way, especially in intimate relationships, and so I imagine it might be difficult for him to focus entirely on being in the here and now—plus he has a few lines about thinking too fast, having trouble slowing down, which might pose a problem in regards to the “chasing the rabbit” drift issue where a person latches onto a thought and follows it, dragging the other person into their own mind instead of focusing on a problem at hand. Hawk is a force of personality. It might be difficult to manage that at first.

And then BJ. I think—and I know this isn’t always the most popular interpretation of the character—but I think he has a lot of layers. He’s got some interesting quiet anger that comes out in bursts, and he becomes increasingly (visibly...) angry as the war wears on. Conflicts where he and Hawkeye are ‘out of sync’ (see Preventative Medicine) are also increasingly common. Hence why I think there may be some issues with BJ’s willingness to let people in as time wears on. He seems to be keeping a lot of stuff down. He isn’t always the best at being honest with himself and others (see GFA) which could interfere with a successful drift, too.

That said, I do think those potential conflicts are the exceptions to their usual dynamic, which tends to be just ridiculously in sync (Mako and Raleigh have their own issues, too, and they have a stronger neural handshake than most pilots we see in the first movie). For Hawkeye and BJ, being in sync is a fundamental part of their sitcom buddy dynamic. They have a language all their own by script design, and I don’t think it gets any more “dialogue compatible” than that.

Are Hawkeye and BJ drift compatible? Sound off

[adangerousbond]

The End is the Beginning

Chapter two

I was sad that there wasn't a new episode, so somehow that turned into a 5k chapter for this story, still may only be a two shot, or more, depending on how my time goes, but I have a bit of an outline for a 3rd chapter already, so that is pretty likely. Are we all doing okay? Did we survive the first week? I am so grateful for all the amazing feedback I go on the first chapter, I appreciate it so much and definitely encourages me to keep writing, so thanks! As usual, written out pretty quickly and on no sleep with no proof reading, so you could be in for anything. 

Read below at ff.net or at AO3

They were onto the third movie before any further interruptions, bar the occasional question here and there from Kora, who seemed just as awed by the improvements made to movie making as Daniel. May had surprised Daisy by being able to answer more questions than she could, and she quickly decided that May was a fan of Disney movies, and somehow, she had never found out about this particular fact until now.

"Alright, at least go pretend to be getting some rest," Coulson told the group as he entered the darkened room, grinning at the scene ahead of him and not quite sure which part was his favourite.

"But Dad," Daisy jokingly complained, gently waking Daniel up nonetheless, the latter blinking away the confusion for a moment, gaining more confusion at the added guests since he was last awake.

Rising up, she could feel the soreness to her muscles, both from her fight and from sitting still for so long; from doing too much and too little, but at least it was a feeling. She caught Coulson's eye, and knew he was holding back some sort of comment or question, but clearly deciding it wasn't the time or place, so she made no move to draw it out, passing by him instead with a soft smile as Daniel followed close behind silently.

"May, a word," Coulson stated as the others were nearly out, evidently wanting to speak to the other agent alone, something that seemed normal enough to everyone accept Kora, who stilled in the hallway, worried the conversation was regarding her.

"Regardless of what they or you decide, they won't kick you out and they won't hand you over to someone else, they don't give up on people," Daisy paused for a moment to ease her sisters concerns, getting a weak smile in return, "I should know that better than anyone here."

Her sister nodded in response, continuing on her way to wherever May had set her up in or just somewhere to clear her head, Daisy wasn't quite sure on the answer, but it didn't seem pressing to know right now, she knew she would be safe and that was all that she needed to know. A hand came to her back, guiding her forward, as she realised that they were still standing in the empty hallway.

Heading back to her room, she felt his hesitation as they neared,

Quiet took over the room quick enough, Daniel falling back asleep easy enough; knowing she was alive and well next to him and that they were safe in the base, making it infinitely easier. A part of her was jealous that he could sleep, the part of her begging for more sleep that was, but mostly, she was just glad that he was able to finally rest, and that maybe it was her turn to watch out over him.

Sitting hunched over reading her tablet, she couldn't help but keep checking that the man asleep next to her was alive and breathing, that he wasn't just a figment of her imagination. She had debated trying to go back to sleep as the time dragged on, but the constant running around in her mind, told her that she wouldn't stand a chance at sleeping.

The humming in her veins and the crawling feeling on her skin, became all too much, she had wanted to clean up for a while, but she knew a shower would wake her body up fully, and while she wasn't sleeping, she still felt like she was resting. Checking her phone, and realising that it was nearly an acceptable time around the base to be up, she decided that she couldn't wait any longer and headed for the shower.

Slipping back into her bunk, she felt as if she had managed to scrub a layer of skin off, but still hadn't quite managed to scrub off the entire feeling of death. Glancing around, she realised that Daniel must have woken and gotten a similar plan as herself, or he had gone looking for her, either way,

"Morning," he greeted warmly as he re-entered the room, looking cleaned and refreshed, telling her he had had the same idea.

"Hmm," she responded absentmindedly, immediately leaning onto his side as he sat beside her.

She didn't quite understand the part of her seeking the contact, seeking his warmth, she had after all, spent most of life pushed aside, without anyone that she trusted would be around long enough for her to reach out for that comfort. But right now, it was about the only thing that made her feel fully alive, that made her forget that she had had died the day prior.

Facing him, she traced her hand along the side of his face, she felt him still slightly at the touch, she could feel his heart beating, she could feel hers beating, reminding her they were alive, reminding her they had won, and that they were here; together. Bringing her lips to his, she started slow, savouring the moment, the calmness to the room that had started her pace, quickly diminishing as she felt a heat rising deep inside, a heat that was working well to chase away the cold memory of space.

Shifting herself so that she was straddling him, she hummed in approval as his hands made there way under her top and started exploring across her skin. She pushed him back down onto the bed, chasing the feeling of alive that their contact seemed to bring, right now she felt so far from death, so far from the feeling of loneliness and disappear that clouded her few memories of floating through space.

A knock at her door broke them apart instantly, him dropping his hands and freezing silently in his position on the bed, as she sat up straight, leaning on her thighs either side of him, waiting to establish who and why the interruption. The annoyance fading as she smirked at his worry about being caught out, but she could see under the worry that he was annoyed at the interruption just as much as she was.

"Sousa, get decent and come give me a hand," Mack's voice rattled through the door, his sure tone holding a hint of amusement as well.

"He'll just be a minute," Daisy responded, grinning the moment that she stopped talking, trying not to laugh, standing up to let the man in question right himself.

Sitting at the bench next to Alya, Daisy listened as the little girl rambled on to her father about the night before, as he listened as if it was the most interesting story he had ever been told. She grinned at her friend, at how good a father he was, he was the type of father that she would have given anything to have had growing up, not that it surprised her, she always knew her friends would make amazing parents one day.

"You cook now?" she asked as he placed a plate of waffles in front of her that actually looked pretty edible.

"Picked up a few things over the years," Fitz explained, head tilted towards the reason with a large smile.

"It's so crazy that it was barely any time for us but years for you's," she mused back, toying with her food for a moment, debating if she could eat or not, the smell winning out and she took a small bite.

"At least it was more than a few hours for you," Flint spoke up as he entered the kitchen, making his way over to join with a hungry look on his face, "got any spare?"

"It went quick, especially once we had this little monkey," Fitz responded to the younger boy, putting a plate together from him as well, twice the size of the other twos.

"I bet," Daisy agreed, managing a couple more mouthfuls of food that her body seemed to accept better than the first, almost as if it needed to be reminded that it did in fact still need nourishment.

"We have so many stories to tell you all, and so many videos to share," Fitz told her, he knew that the team had missed out on so much of his daughters life so far, and that they would all want to know everything, it was something that Jemma had been saddened by, not getting to share it with the rest of their weird family, almost more than their actual blood family.

"How are you settling in?" Daisy asked her sister, dropping down to sit next to her in Zephyr One's cockpit, it had taken her a while to find her, and she realised now, that the plane probably felt like simultaneously like her best bet to escape, and her link to staying, much like she had felt about the Bus.

"So far so good, May has been very helpful," Kora smiled warmly, relaxing slightly at her sister's caring tone, "surprisingly."

"She's good like that, regardless of what she says," Daisy told her, staring out into the base, almost as if searching for the person in question.

"I hope, I hope you don't mind that I'm still here," Kora fidgeted over her words, worried that she had blown her shot, worried that her last link to anyone might be too damaged.

"I don't, honestly," Daisy tried to make her believe her, knowing how much the feeling of being unwanted could eat you up inside.

"I just want the chance to get to know you, to make up for everything I did," her sister explained, not meeting her eye, and she wanted to tell her that she understood, that she had been in similar situations, seeking forgiveness and seeking connection, even when she didn't realise that it was what she was looking at the time.

"You brought me back to life, that's a good start," she told her, choosing to go a simpler route for now, not entirely sure she was up for going to deep into her past just yet, not when she was only really keeping herself together enough to keep moving forward at the moment, "I'm glad you're here."

"Me too, I want to get to know you, really," Kora smiled shyly, although technically the older sister, everything about her showed that in life and in actual years lived, she was the younger of the two, "I never knew any family outside of our mother."

"I never had any family to know," Daisy commented offhandedly, a sadness clouding her tone, and as hard as it had been, she wasn't sure if it was something she would give up her current family for.

"I-I, I wish that you knew the Jiaying that I did," Kora was silent for a moment, not quite sure how to take remark, choosing to stick with honesty if she wanted to get anywhere.

"I got to a little bit, that's more than I thought I would," Daisy told her kindly, she was even more grateful that Daniel had pushed her to talk to her mother, with how things turned out, "but no, I was meaning that I'm happy to get the chance to get to know my sister too."

"Daisy, a minute?" Jemma interrupted as they approached control.

"Sorry, probably more tests," Daisy smiled at her sister apologetically, catching her friends desire to talk alone.

"Is everything okay?" Kora asked, concerned that she had done something wrong when bringing her back to life.

"Yes, yes, everything's fine," Jemma pushed aside the younger woman's concern with a bright smile, practically dragging the other into a nearby empty room.

"What's up?" Daisy questioned her friend, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion over the actions.

"I just wanted to talk to you, about everything, well, mainly about one little, big thing in particular. It's hard, but ultimately it's the right decision, and I just wanted talk it over with you first, I think you'll agree but," Jemma rambled on, skirting around the topic she had cornered her for, clearly not sure how to start.

"Your leaving, aren't you? You, Fitz and Alya are going to your happy ever after, right?" Daisy spoke quietly, saving her friend from herself, she had been expecting it, and truthfully, she got it, but it still stung deep inside.

"Yeah, yeah, how did you guess? Did Fitz say something already?" Jemma paused, surprised, and worried that she had found out some other way.

"You have your serious, sad face on, it was either that or I was dying again, and I was hoping that wasn't it," Daisy explained, smirking to hide the rising emotion that she was trying her hardest to keep down, as much as it hurt, her friends did deserve this more than anything.

"Oh, right, yes, well, we just want Alya to have as normal a life as she can, we don't want to leave, but-," Jemma stated back on the speech that she had prepared earlier, only to be cut off by her friend pulling her in for a tight hug.

"It's the right thing to do for her," Daisy agreed as she pulled back, wiping a stray tear away, "when?"

"That's the thing," Jemma toyed with her words again, and Daisy knew she wouldn't be ready for whatever the answer, "tomorrow."

"But that's, that's so soon?" Daisy stated, she definitely wasn't ready for that.

"We will still help out on things from afar, but we just, we can't keep doing it anymore, and we don't want her at risk more than she already has been," Jemma brushed aside her own tear, knowing that it was right and that her friend would understand, but still upset about the whole thing.

"Hey, no one has seen you in a while," Daniel broke the silence of her bunk, taking her in as he closed the door behind him.

"I just needed some quiet," Daisy stared straight ahead, paying him no attention as he sat next to her on the bed, taking her hand in silent comfort.

"I know it won't be the same, but they'll still be in your life," he told her gently, guessing the reason for her hiding away correctly.

"Will they though? I mean we'll still talk now and then, probably text and email each other for a while, but that will fade and eventually, we'll just be the people who occasionally catch up and barley know who each other is anymore," she responded sadly, a part of her knowing that they would still be in her life, that he was right, but that part was far from the loudest in her mind right now.

"What you have been through together, all of you, that bonds people in ways that even if you don't talk as much as you do now, you will always be close, no matter the physical distance," he tried a different approach, his hand reaching for hers as he watched her closely.

"Ugh, I hate that I'm even mad about it, I know it's the best thing for Alya, but it's," she blinked away a tear as she looked down, almost ashamedly.

"It's bringing up some things," he finished for her, squeezing her hand softly, Mack had warned him that she had been hurt, but he had guessed that she had probably been hurt more than either had even realised.

"I should be used to it by now, everyone always ends up leaving, walking away, dying," she gave him a sad smile, not wanting to drop all the thoughts running through her head on him, but something about his presence, made it hard to stop talking, "this team, they're the only people that have suck by me, and for so long, I guess I got used to it, which is something I've told myself not to do since I was a kid."

"You still have them," his words sure, he mightn't know a lot about the world he lived in now, but one thing he knew for certain was that this team had her back.

"For how long, they're all slowly going to go off to do their own things, live their own lives," she knew she had them, but for how long, how long until it was back to her by herself, trying to pretend she was okay with being lonely, even if she wasn't sure she could even pretend that these days, "hell, even you and Kora, it's only a matter of time before even you two decide there's bigger and better things, less complicated things, out there."

"Kora wants to be in your life, she clearly wants to be just like her big sister, or little sister? Not sure how that works?" he told her honestly, focusing on the easier part of her sentence, before turning more serious, "and me, Daisy, you have me, I'm not going anywhere."

"You can't say that, you were just offering yourself up to stay in a different timeline like yesterday," she fired up, not accepting his words, not when she was terrified both that they were true, and that she might just want to believe them.

"So that you would live," he gave her hand a light squeeze, glad when she didn't pull away, because he had no other answer to give.

"That's not fair," she growled in response, he had been ready to say goodbye to her, to leave her, and even though deep down, she got it, she was still angry at him for it.

"Neither is you killing yourself to save us all, but we would both do it again and we both know it," he reasoned, a little too well for her liking, "I know better to promise that I won't die, though, technically I am already dead, but you've got me, if that's what you want."

"You can't say that, you can't promise that, not when you barely know me, you don't know the horrible things I've done, a lot of which that hasn't been for the greater good," she responded dryly, she wasn't sure she had forgiven herself for a lot of the things she's done, and she was definitely not sure how someone like him would take them.

"You're right, I don't know all of what you've done, but I know –" he started, his voice even and honest.

"-My type?" she guessed, a conversation from a long-ago time loop popping into her mind.

"I know you, or at least the parts you have been prepared to show me," he told her, pausing before gaining the words to continue, needing to make her listen and understand, to believe him, "I know the you that has had my back this whole time, the part that listened to me complain about Hydra and being pulled out of my timeline, the part that joked around with me, the part that managed to put a shard of glass under your skin to get us out of that barn, the part that was prepared to do a Hail Mary into space to save her friends, and the part that even though you've been hurt countless times before, you're still prepared to let me in, if only a little."

Watching him closely, she knew he was giving her a chance to take his words in, letting her decide on her next move, her next issue to raise. Choosing to decide that tomorrow was another issue, that maybe she was setting herself up for more pain, but that maybe, just maybe, that she was actually in for more pain if she pushed him away completely, she kissed him, her tongue slipping into his mouth and deepening the kiss before he had fully caught her decision, pulling herself into his embrace as much as she could once he did.

Responding with the same favour, trying to convey his words now in touch, trying to convince her that he was here for her, that he wasn't going anywhere and that for him, she was enough. He pushed her backwards onto the pillow, his shirt being dragged back over his shoulders before he had even realised that she had undone his buttons.

"Is this when you get all gentleman-y and stop to make sure this is allowed?" she smirked at him as he pulled back, both taking the chance to catch their breath for a moment.

"I was just going to ask if the door locks," he responded, huskier than usual, glancing towards the door for a moment.

"Oh, everyone around here knocks," she told him, not wanting him to get up and lock the door, pulling him back in for another quick kiss, "and if they don't, it's really their own fault."

"But," he started, resting his forehead on hers for a moment, "you are okay with this?"

"Definitely," she flipped them over, both to prove her point and speed up the slow pace that he seemed to be setting, he was relishing in the fact she was alive, whereas she needed to feel alive.

By the time they had redressed and headed to find the others, they had only just made it in time for the last team dinner, a going away of sorts for the Fitzsimmons family. Joining them all quietly at the table, Daisy made especially sure to avoid the smirk she had caught May sending her as they entered, choosing instead to make small talk with Piper, who was more than used to not being caught up on everything.

Midway through a conversation with Jemma and Alya, she realised that Daniel and Fitz were fast becoming friends, as she paused to smile at their animated conversation, she caught the attention of Jemma, the both grinning at the sight. The happiness quickly clouded in sadness as she remembered that the new friendship would be short lived, in this form anyway.

By the end of the dinner, no one was quite ready to leave, quite ready for it to be over, not only because that meant it was closer to Fitz and Jemma leaving, but also because they all knew it was just the start, that soon enough others would start leaving until they all had. This was the start of the end for the team, and no one was quite ready to admit that.

The next morning, they had all managed to stagger their goodbyes with the three, Daisy having waited purposely near the vehicle bay, to ensure that she would get her goodbye, but also, in an attempt to delay it as much as possible. Watching them approach for the last time in an unknown amount of time, she tried to stay as positive to them as possible, knowing that it was the best think for their child and them.

After saying their goodbyes, Fitz took Alya off to the car, leaving the two best friends a moment to each other, whether Jemma had requested it or not, Daisy was thankful for the chance. Hugging each other tightly, they both let the tears run freely, after everything that they had been through together, after every mission, every death, and every memory since they had gotten on that bus as near kids, now they were parting as sisters and they both knew that they would try like anything to keep in as constant contact as they possibly could.

Entering the kitchen after the goodbyes with Flint in tow and ready for her distraction plan, Daisy was glad to see that the two she had requested to meet her there, were sitting waiting, talking politely with each other. She smiled to herself, glad that they were getting along regardless of what had gone down, both trying to make an effort with another person they saw as important in her life.

"I've set these up super basic for you both, I've put my number in as the emergency contact, and I've put everyone's details in too," Daisy informed them, hand an iPhone to the of them both, as Flint placed a box with various needed cords next to them both.

"So, we can call each other wherever we are?" Kora asked, gathering from her limited knowledge, turning the phone over in her hand a few times, as if trying to work out how they work exactly.

"And take photos," Daniel told her, remembering a moment in an alley that brought a smile to his face, regardless of what had come next.

"Really? With this?" Kora asked, the confusion clear, as she worked out at the very least how to make the screen light up, showing Daniel too.

"Oh man, this is worse than I thought it would be," Flint groaned, he had taken to the technology in this time like a fish to water, probably helped by the fact he had come from the future, not the past, and had thought it might be entertaining when Daisy had asked him to help her, but now he wasn't so sure.

"Yes, you can call, video chat, or text from it," Daisy started out simple, grinning at the blank looks she got in response.

"Text?" Kora asked, trying to slide the screen up to get into it, having between the two found the message on the screen telling them too.

"Like an email but quicker and easier," Flint explained further, realising his mistake when neither seemed to understand any better.

"Email?" Daniel sounded more confused than ever, turning his phone asking for a passcode to Daisy.

"Your passwords are your birthyear," she told them with a grin, she had debated letting them choose their own, but then decided that this option was more amusing, and by the chuckle he gave her in response, he understood her reasoning.

"An instant letter to your phone?" Flint tried once again, sitting down in defeat after it didn't help them much more.

"I'll just show you," Daisy stepped in, pulling out her own phone and sending them both a message separately, and then decided to take a photo and send it to them both, creating a group message she was pretty sure she would end up regretting.

"Wow!" Daniel exclaimed, tapping on the notification, and managing to bring up the message screen.

"That's so cool," Kora agreed, playing around for a moment until she worked out how to respond back, the other's phones buzzing with the new message and Daisy knew that she was definitely going to regret that group message.

"Okay, so do you both think you have enough of an idea to at least call one of us?" Daisy questioned the group after a while, receiving apprehensive nods in response.

"Now we move onto social media," Flint stated, receiving a grin from May as she entered the room and caught the end of the sentence.

"No, no we don't," Daisy told him, that was not something the two in training were ready for, and probably not something the world was ready for yet either.

"What's that?" Kora asked, intrigued, as she swiped across the screens looking for something she had missed.

"Facebook, Instagram, snapchat, twitter, TicToc, the question is which one first?" Flint mused, pretending to think hard on the subject.

"None, none first," Daisy shook her head, smirking at May who joined them at the table without a word.

"I could see Kora getting behind TicToc, and you Daniel, I think you're more of an Instagram, or maybe twitter," Flint decided after a moment, grinning at them trying to find an app on their phones matching anything close to what he had mentioned.

"Is that good or bad?" Daniel asked the group, placing his phone down in front of him.

"What's TicToc?" Kora questioned too.

"That is a lesson for another day," Daisy stated, trying to get them to drop it.

"Where's the fun in that," Flint protested, deciding on a middle ground, "can we at least teach them about YouTube?"

"I don't think it is safe to set them loose on the internet with strangers just yet," Daisy laughed, sharing a grin with May on the thought.

"You just don't want them finding out about online shopping and judging your problem," Flint countered, smirking at her as he spoke.

"Online is safer for us," Daisy glared at the teenager, explaining her reasoning.

"Online shopping sounds pretty self-explanatory, and something I could get behind," Kora grinned, enjoying the ease that the afternoon had held with her sister.

"Free shipping is everything," Daisy agreed for a moment, before continuing, "but there's a lot to learn before we get you to that point."

"Yeah, like clickbait, and viruses, scams, oh, can't forget about trolls," Flint added on, accepting that the phone lesson was over for the day and the internet was another day issue.

"Firewalls?" Daniel questioned the word he had heard Daisy say numerous times now while on her computer.

"They're only an issue if you want to do less than legal things," Flint stated, receiving another glare from the only one at the table that really did anything with them.

"And not something you need to know about for a long time," Daisy pointed out after a moment, reaching down into the bag she had brought and placing a tablet in front of them now instead, "anyway, we have these next."

"Why do we need another phone?" Daniel asked honestly, he had yet to see or hear about something that the phone he had couldn't do.

"It's not a phone," Daisy smiled, enjoying this little lesson in technology more than she thought she would.

"It looks just like a bigger phone," Kora stated, turning it over to investigate as she did with the phone.

"That's basically all it is," May shrugged, not helping the situation at hand.

"Just better because it's bigger?" Kora asked, her head tilted like a dog trying to work something out.

"It's not about the size," Daisy told them, the question reminding her of the time Daniel suggested using a bigger computer to hack, complaining her laptop was tiny.

"It's always about the size," Kora grinned in response, gaining a chuckle from May.

"Is that why, you know what, never mind, I don't want to know the answer," Daisy was thrown for a moment at the inuendo from her sister, choosing, finally, just to get back to the topic, "it's a tablet, it's kind of a cross between a phone and a computer."

"What does it do that a phone doesn't?" Kora smiled at her sisters stammering, feeling like it was an actual normal sister moment.

"Nothing really," May piped up, once again not helping the situation, but evidently holding some annoyance to the amount of technology she was forced to use.

"Anyway, these are linked to the S.H.I.E.L.D network, so you can access files, search things or follow current missions, not that there's much on there at the moment," Daisy explained, focusing the group back to the task, "I've programmed it so that you can't accidently delete or change things at all as well."

"So, you put them on read-only mode?" May nodded in approval, "that's a good idea."

"To search is very similar to the phone, just press the little magnifying glass," Daisy started teaching, half the reason she had wanted them to learn to use it was so that she could leave them to their own devices to learn about S.H.I.E.L.D. since their times, and her, if she was being honest, "yep, like that and then type in something, just type my name for now."

"Why does he have more come up than me?" Kora questioned, trying to work out where she had gone wrong.

"His is set to a higher level than yours," Daisy answered nonchalantly.

"Oh," her sister responded, obviously dismayed at the reason, but accepted it, nonetheless.

"Not because we don't trust you or anything, just you've never actually been in S.H.I.E.L.D. or had any training or anything with us, whereas Daniel was the chief at area 51," Daisy explained further realising how she took it, "I figured that gave him a bit higher clearance."

"Does that mean I have higher clearance than you?" Daniel piped up, grinning at her statement.

"Well, she was the fill in director once," May pointed out, shrugging at the information that was old news to her.

"Really?" Daniel asked, initially surprised at the comment, but as he thought about it, it did make sense.

"Not for very long, and it didn't go the best," Daisy laughed, brushing the information aside quickly.

"So, you outrank us all?" Kora questioned, smiling at her sister.

"Don't forget it," Coulson responded for her as he joined them, clearly having come looking for them, "we need to do a supply run."

"Daniel and I'll go in the morning," Daisy offered, jumping at the idea of getting out of the Lighthouse, and getting the chance to introduce Daniel to her time period.

"Can I come too?" Kora asked reservedly, worried for the rejection she might get, "I wouldn't mind getting out of here for a bit, seeing what the world is like now."

"Of course," Daisy agreed instantly, nodded assuredly to her sister.

"I'm coming too," Flint stated, he was always down for a chance to explore, and he figured with two tagalongs from the past, it could make quite the interesting trip.

[stratamuzak]

Interview with Voltagehawk

STRATA: What artists in particular you are drawn to (alive or deceased) that you listen to for particular moods? Such as happy/sad/contemplative/etc… Explain why you might listen to one artist for a particular mood.

CHASE AROCHA When I want to feel inspired I listen to a lot of the different projects of Mike Patton. Be it Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Peeping Tom, or Tomahawk, the range of styles of music is so diverse that I’ve been listening for like 15 years and I haven’t gotten bored yet, haha. When I want to relax or chill, I love BadBadNotGood, an amazing jazz artist doing incredible arrangements all in a hip-hop context. It’s great! Or Ray Lynch, I really love his writing and use of counterpoint melody. Then if I’m getting hyped I put on something like Dying Fetus or Vitriol, or Maximum the Hormone. And any other time I’m blaring Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper and Sturgill Simpson.

DAN FENTON I think a lot of the time music finds my mood. Sort of more a spiritual or cosmic connection. When I was a kid my mom would make us watch musicals if we stayed home sick from school. Jokes was on her because I hated school but I loved learning musical scores and how to write dynamic parts and movements. The fact that people like Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra or Marlon Brand were also amazing actors only added to that unlikely education. I learned how to really feel music between that and the intense very bloody hymns we had to sing in church. I understand the sentiment but that shit is harder than a lot of black metal. “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb”. Hard core shit. Sorry, I digress. During the making of our most recent record which is called Electric Thunder and set for release later this year or early next (hard to navigate releases with all this pandemic shit) I listened exclusively to film scores, classical music and radio evangelists. I am not religious but I grew up in a preacher’s home and when I needed to get my creative push and anger at its peak, I listened to preachers who were clearly greed driven and motivated by the lust for power. It made my adrenaline rush in anger and it came out in the recording for sure. I am a huge fan of Hans Zimmer and Vangelis. Each of these artists move me in powerful ways. The juxtaposition of darkness and light both in traditional instrumentation and experimental synth based work. Just musical giants. When I am feeling frustrated about the social issues I see everyday in my East Nashville neighborhood I listen to KRS-One, Kamasi Washington, Outkast. A lot of protest music. I am in love with band IDLES from the UK. Such powerful lyrics tackling issues like the need for male vulnerability, equality for all and the  seemingly ironic brutal beat down of toxic masculinity. That band is great if you’re happy, mad, sad, whatever.

STRATA: Do you have a process you go through prior to writing, playing, and even performing?

CHASE AROCHA I do a lot of breathing exercises like the Wim Hof techniques. I have generalized anxiety disorder and I used to get horrible debilitating panic attacks, it helped me get into breathing and meditation. Anxiety will never go away but you learn ways to live with it and push through your panic. I think about how much this means to me and how long I’ve spent doing it, I try to see that I value myself as a person and then from that thinking I can just let go and play music. Only approaching it with love and not worrying about mistakes because that’s how we learn.

DAN FENTON The entire thing is one process. Like a heros journey of sorts. I listen and meditate everyday, I believe in a cosmic river of inspiration that flows from an energy that is and has always been. I believe if you listen hard enough and give yourself to the music the muse will send your mind transmissions that may only be a section of a song, or perhaps they are an entire album, but everyday I show up. A few years ago I read this book called The War Of Art, by Steven Pressfield. In this book he describes the invisible force he calls the Resistance. The Resistance may be things both “good or bad”, but they are anything that keeps you from showing up for your art. So I show up everyday, you can ask the dudes in the band, they receive a work tape maybe twice a week with new shit to try out. If I don’t feel that muse working I don’t force it, but I instead wait on further transmissions from the cosmic womb. All sounds crazy, but my story is crazy, so crazy makes the most sense. In the studio I have many processes. I found while recording vocals I perform better in complete darkness, I have realized how much I live inside my head and how active my imagination is and equally ADD my eyes are. So when I can’t see it brings to life the imagery and the passion of the song. I can see all those people I write about, all the landscapes, the love, lust, joy and pain. I also do some method stuff, keep things in my pockets pertaining to a character I may be portraying in a song. Wanna be Daniel Day Lewis shit.

STRATA: Your own current project, discuss the process your music went through as you built each layer. From beginning to the end of it. 

CHASE AROCHA This all started with our drummer Jarrad having a vision and going through trials and errors of finding the right people to execute that. Along the way Dan, Tyler, and I all came into the picture and that vision morphed into something we all felt was not even from us. Like we were an antenna receiving a signal and these riffs and lyrics quickly meshed into something I haven’t heard before. Part hard rock, part jazz, part punk and hardcore. All with this message of love and truth being the reason for living. To end the ones controlling our thoughts and dividing us or tribalism and greed. I feel like we made something worth listening to and that’s all I feel like you can really hope for.

DAN FENTON The self titled record that we have available now on all streaming platforms was two different profound stages in my life all in the making of one record. When we began, Jarrad and I partied a fuck ton, and I was descending into some serious personal shit with alcohol. It was bad, I couldn’t get through a day without way too high of a blood alcohol level. Before we finished vocals on the record, I stayed up one night working and drinking, perhaps I had never stopped from how many nights before, who fucking knows. Anyhow, I died for 9 minutes on the side porch of my house. Fully shut down, fucking dead. Mind you, I didn’t want to die, I just didn’t know how to lay off the bottle. Woke up in the ICU surrounded by my band, my wife and what few friends I had left. At that moment Voltagehawk became a complete family to me. I spent a stint in rehab (Jarrad drove me) and that was several years ago now. When I got out I went back to finish the record, make some amends and chase this thing out for real. So that was some info on the first record. The new Album which is a 13 song space odyssey named Electric Thunder, after our beloved Electric Thunder Studio owned and operated by our resident space wizard producer Geoff Piller, was not so dramatic. After I got my shit together and my mind cleared up I began to write everyday like a mad man. Song after song after song came like never before. I think we cut 15 songs out before we settled on the final 13. Our process as a band is often for myself or one of the other dudes to present a bare bones or often finished idea to the band and we run it through the Hawk Filter. The Hawk Filter is just the decomposition and reconstruction of every rough idea till it fits us. Which is silly to say because if we like, it we do it, not a matter of genre worship. Shit’s good, do it. Always do what’s best for the song.

STRATA: Can your music personally be an open door to breath and bend in the world of artistic exploration? In Other Words… how comfortable are you as an artist exploring other types of music and creating projects that might be totally  different than what you are creating now?

CHASE AROCHA There is so much great music in the world in so many styles, why shouldn’t we try to explore them all! I’m always trying something I haven’t done before, not always as a challenge, but I would hope it’s natural for people to do in art. We shouldn’t be the same people we were 2 years ago, let alone 10. I love jazz, Death Metal, and country music. If you can find a really fun and genuine way to blend those then that’s absolutely what you should do! Don’t be tied down to what kind of music you’re making and just make music.

DAN FENTON That’s all we do all day. Everything on this planet, and above it, and in it’s majestic seas and mountains, all these people of all the cultures of all the world and their energy and their culture all influence and musical inspiration is welcome. Our philosophy is never say no, and jump off the cliff, and pull yourself back up. Meaning: try all the musical options then settle on the one we believe is the most amazing. So much of our influence is from cinema and books, video games, you name it. I’ll pluck a support cable on every bridge I see ‘til I am dead just to see if it speaks to me. Sonically there are no fucking rules, and if you impose rules, fuck your rules. We love to create, to talk about creating and then to birth something new is beyond amazing.

STRATA: Are you open to change your style, genre even, and approach to how and what you create every time you enter a studio? Or do you find once you have a formula in place do you find it best to stay with what you know? Many times artists will change how they approach their songwriting and even their recording staff/producers.

CHASE AROCHA

Like I said before, I believe that you should just make music and with that should come constant experimentation. When we record we find sounds from all over the place. From children’s toy instruments, to skateboard wheels spinning to imitate rain. Our writing is kind of always evolving and changing. Dan is an amazing writer who literally has lyrics and melodies pouring out of his hands and face. Everyday he has new ideas and records and sends them to everyone. Jarrad is great at taking those riffs and making suggestions on how the structure could be of a song along with feel. I am obsessed with adding layers of guitars however I can, but I also write a lot and send tracks as well. Tyler is a tone junkie on the bass, filling in the bottom end and has such a great approach to being independent from the guitars with his lines. We send tracks back and forth to each other then we get in a room and flesh them out. The whole time in the process the songs are constantly changing and evolving into the sound we have. We are always open to change and never believe in the word No when discussing music and art. You try every idea and see what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes when one member has a vision of how a song should go and is trying to communicate that,  you should respect his idea and see it through. If it doesn’t work that’s okay, we tried!

DAN FENTON Voltagehawk is ever evolving. As it stands, we spend way too much time trying to pigeon hole what people will refer to our sound as. I don’t care what you call it as long as it moves you. I listen to everything from John Coltrane and Tom Waits to Napalm Death and Motorhead, Antonio Lucio Vivaldi to Kamasi Washington. IDLES and Bad Brains. If you refuse to evolve as an artist, experimenting, growing, trying new methods, all these elements then you cannot grow as a human being. Too many people are happy where they are, just okay, making the same music that their dads made and trying to cosplay some kind of yesteryear. We don’t do that shit, we’re us, that’s it. We grow, when you hear the Electric Thunder for the first time you will understand everything. If you burn some sage next to a photo of Carl Sagan while you listen to Electric Thunder, you will see the cosmic river in your minds eye. The world is full of people with a blockage in their brain. They cannot see that this bullshit we call a life is just a series of labor for hire gigs that leave us rapidly in the middle. We’re trying to break away from it all and follow our feathers, our truth, our search for enlightenment on our hero’s journey. I’ll leave you with this. Know Thyself.

[royallypsychotic]

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A Brief Summary of Ideas: Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

*These summaries are kept intentionally very brief, just hitting what I consider some of the important/interesting takeaways, most word-for-word or paraphrased. My goal is also to stick to ideas/principals that might guide others (or my future self) in deciding the value of a read (or re-reading). T = takeaway, Q = Question

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race

Author: Beverly Daniel Tatum, PhD

A great deal of social segregation in our communities, so most of the early information we receive about “others” is not firsthand.

Sometimes the assumptions we make are from what we have NOT been told.

Race: group that is socially defined based on physical criteria. 

Racism:

System of advantage based on race.

Prejudice plus power.

Racial prejudice? (may be too simplistic)

While all whites benefit from racism, they don’t benefit equally. You may be systematically disadvantaged in some areas (ex. race/gender) but systematically advantaged in others (ex. able bodied, educated, young).

Racial identity development: process of defining for oneself the personal significance and social meaning of belonging to a particular racial group.

Identity is complex.

Other people are the mirror in which we see ourselves. 

Who is my cohort group?

What has my social context been?

7 categories of “otherness” generally seen in the U.S.; race/ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age, and physical/mental ability. 

Most of us will find that we are both “dominant” and “targeted” in various categories. 

Dominant / Subordinate

Dominant groups set the parameters within which the subordinates operate. 

Often subordinate group is labeled defective or substandard in significant ways.

When subordinate group member demonstrates positive qualities believed to be more characteristic of dominants; they’re labeled an anomaly.

Dominant groups generally don’t like to be reminded of the existence of inequality. Rationalizations have been created to justify the social arrangements. 

Children who have been silenced often enough learn not to talk about race publicly. Their questions don’t go away, just unasked. 

Racial groupings begins by the 6th or 7th grade. They begin to explore the question of identity (kids of color more likely to be actively engaged in this exploration). 

Racial, ethnic, and cultural identity overlap at the level of lived experience to the point that there is little reason to discuss them separately. 

When feelings (rational or not) are invalidated, most people disengage. Become more likely to turn to someone who will understand their perspective (or “co-sign”). 

Peer groups evaluation of what is Black and what isn’t is powerful (the “acting white” phenomenon). T= Important then to shape either that evaluation or the peer group.

Developing a strong and positive sense of group identity can be a source of psychological protection for members of stigmatized groups. 

Context in which strong identification with ones group can be source of vulnerability: stereotype threat (threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype or doing something that would confirm it). 

Providing role models from the stigmatized group whose achievement defies the stereotypes is important. 

Entity theory: believes intelligence is a fixed characteristic (”what a smart girl you are” reinforces this).

Incremental theory: view intelligence as malleable (more likely to view setbacks as a sign of more effort).

The need for space for those who are subject to societal stigmatization to come together to construct a positive self definition is important. 

Racial identity development: Process during which a single dimension of a person’s complex, layered identity is first isolated, for purposes of revitalization and transformation, and then at Internalization, reintegrated into the person’s total identity matrix.

The process of REC (racial, ethnic, cultural)-identity development is circular; not linear. Begins often in adolescence. Not every person experiences every aspect of the REC-identity process. Some may find other parts of their identities are more salient for them. 

Whites tend to think about race as something that other people have, not something salient for them. 

For white people living in largely white environments, it is possible to live ones entire life without giving focused attention to what it means to be white. 

The social pressure from peers to collude, to not notice racism, can be quite powerful. 

The “if there is a problem with racism, then you must have done something to cause it” attitude relieves the white person of all responsibility for social change. 

If viewing oneself as a group member threatens your self definition, making the paradigm shift from individual to group member can be painful (i.e. in context of white folks viewing their achievements largely as individually merit based and not in context of potential racist environment). 

Whites who are highly identified with a particular subordinate identity may also struggle claiming whiteness as a meaningful group category because they feel far from the white male middle class norm (ex. poor whites or LGTBQ).

Anti-racism efforts are not in the service of people of color. They are part of your own effort to shed the socialization process that has led to behaving in ways that support and maintain the oppression of others. 

Should aim to have a more complete awareness of ourselves and of others to the degree that we neither negate the uniqueness of each person, regardless of that person’s group memberships, nor deny the ever present effects of group memberships for each individual. 

To be color-blind and deny race and ignore existence of racism causes harm because it falsely perpetuates the myth of equal opportunity, blames people of color for their lot in life, and allows whites to live in ignorance. 

You can’t fix what you can’t talk about. 

No other ethnic population in the U.S. is defined and counted according to the one drop rule (*in context of biracial folks). 

T=important for biracial youth to have solid mixed social networks with plenty of black and white folks to create real social comparisons vs. constructed stereotypes. 

Should talk to your kids in advance about possible racial/racism encounters and prepare them with appropriate responses. 

[teamwave11]

Executive Coaching - What's in it For a Project Manager?

I've been in various IT supervisors roles since I started my career over 20 era ago and there is nothing quite as challenging, or as rewarding, as creature a Project Manager. As well as all the very important technical skills a Project Manager needs such as the capability to build a timetable and budget and odor to them, understand the salvation lifecycle, and accounts status, a Project Manager needs to be a negotiator, a team builder, a collaborator, an influencer, and an innovator. These roles require administration aptitudes of the highest caliber. It is this combination of technical management and leadership capacity that type the incumbency so challenging.

So why is this? The problem is that it's rarely the argument that the Project Manager has a clear scope, a crew that he manages directly, no issues, and no-one external to the project with whom he needs to manner or negotiate. Project Managers are typically required to operate in a matrix environment, where they have little or no mastery over resources, timelines, or deliverables. They are likely to spend a considerable numbering of time bargaining for more resources, experimentation to influence stakeholders to nail down the area and deliverables, and trying to find innovative method to deliver according to a tight, often time-boxed, schedule. In the midst of all this, they indispensability to be incumbency models to harmony the strip organ engaged and leaders who can effectively navigate different types of tribe from the variety of organizations with which they must interact. This is no small feat for a Project Manager of a small project, let alone a larger multi-million dollar IT project that is typical of today.

How, then, tins Project Managers find assistance and sustenance on their career journeys, ones that often turns into journeys of self finds and self growth? There are dozens courses to teach specific techniques for managing a project, and there is the Project Management Institute's Project Management Professional (PMP) credential. There are also dozens Project Management leadership layer with topics such as panels building, collaboration, and negotiation. Though these layer are invaluable to maturing technical and administration skills, Executive Coaching is also invaluable to Project Managers as they discovery themselves in increasingly complex and stressful environments, and as they strive to institutionalize new learnings.

So how tins Executive Coaching help? The Executive Coach (who may be either hired directly by the individual or by the Project Manager's employer) testament start by understanding the client's goals. This will paradigm the basis of the Coaching Agenda - the key destination that will be worked on over a end of time, including guiding the Project Manager to define what 'success' evidence look like. For the aim of this article I am departing to assume that the Coaching Agenda is based on the thing of improving a Project Manager's administration skills, in the following four areas:

* Increased level of self awareness * Improved capacity to negotiate and collaborate with stakeholders * Increased nonsense and trust to challenge and innovate * Improved capacity to manage conflict

The Executive Coach testament income the Project Manager through a journey of self finds and development, in lineup to improve their overall leadership skills, and enhance their effectiveness.

Self Awareness

One of the first things an Executive Coach can do is assistance their clients identify and increase their tier of self awareness. Daniel Goleman popularized the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI) in the 1980s and 1990s, one critical component of which is self awareness. There are dozens prognosis tools that can be used to assistance Project Managers understand their layer of emotional espionage and self awareness. Such an assessment provides opportunities for one to achieve a greater level of self understanding, an enhanced ability to self regulate, an understanding of motivation, and an increased tier of empathy and social skills. This can help Project Managers obtain an accurate snapshot of the gradations of leadership development they are in, as well as identify sphere that need to be addressed. Executive Coaches evidence help facilitate and interpret Emotional Intelligence assessments so that the dope can be assimilated and action plans put into location to sustenance the overall goal.

Negotiation and Collaboration

Having established a starting core of self understanding, another critical skill for a Project Manager to strive for is the capability to obtain positive results from different people, in a compound of teams, with potentially very different styles. I had a engraving that called this 'style width', meaning the capacity to understand the style and idea of the fellow you are dealing with, and to modify your own manner in agreement with that, to get a more positive sequence for everyone. Using the establishments from the EI assessment, an Executive Coach tins income the Project Manager further in understanding his or her own skill to stretch their behavior in negotiating with others.

Another funds to improve the Project Manager's ability to negotiate is through supplies such as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Not only does this deepen our understanding of our own styles, but also approx enhances our aptitude to recognize different styles in others. I once attended a Project Management class on negotiation with a band of Project Managers that I led, during which an MBTI assessment for each person was performed. It was enlightening for ourselves to see the various types in the aviation and effective in serving us use the results of the assessment to find different way and language in surgery with others in the organization. The webs backwash was that all of us improved our capability to negotiate and collaborate with other tribe and groups.

The data gathered in such tools can pattern the foundation of a personal development drawing to enhance negotiation and cooperation skills. Executive Coaches operate as Thought Partners to discussion through impression and approaches, assistance identify obstacles and shelter spots and provide sustenance and feedback while the client tests and refines techniques over an extended period. In some circumstances an Executive Coach may have the opportunity to observe the customer in event as the customer puts the new techniques into practice in the vocation place. The Coach will then provide constructive response in a non-threatening, non-judgmental, safe environment. This process will allow the client to protocol from the starting grain of self understanding, through increased self outgrowth and enhancement in his or her leadership skills.

Courage and Confidence

Two important logs of being a successful indication are balls and confidence. This can be illustrated in numerous forms... risking an innovative approach in order to meet a tight deadline, pushing back assertively and appropriately when a Business Sponsor attempts to addition project scope, negotiating with another possibly difficult segment of the convention in order to obtain facilities and tools that the project needs. An Executive Coach will assume the incumbency of Trusted Advisor and Thought Partner as the Project Manager continues to develop these characteristics, and handbooks the Project Manager as he or she experiment various new techniques.

One way that tins be particularly helpful is Appreciative Inquiry (AI). AI can be used at either the organizational or individual level and is the direction of carrying effectiveness and positive experiences from the past into the present and future in order to bring roughly positive transformational change. This reminds me of the 'Lessons Learned' tendency that Project Managers means with the very crucial release that the sole center of AI is on what worked well, how we tins do more of that in the future, and how we can implement a more positive refinement moving forward.

An Executive Coach helps Project Managers apply this direction to themselves, using a battery of envisaging exercises to identify summit experiences from the past. As sliver of this, the Project Manager testament identify the intensity that were used in those ben experiences, and how they might be used in the betrayal and future. This center on intensity consequences in a significant addition in a client's confidence. It can also be combined with another assessment tool, 'Strengthsfinder', based on the bundle by Tom Rath. The premise is that it is much easier to do more of our strengths than it is to 'fix' our weaknesses, and so a person's summit 5 force are identified out of a possible 34. Combined with AI, this is a very powerful method in structure a Project Manager's testicles and confidence. An Executive Coach will guide the Project Manager through the process, helping define event plans for planning and sustaining change for the future. An Executive Coach will occupation with the Project Manager to tie these techniques into the established coaching agenda and maintenance them as they utility them to meet their outgrowth and project goals.

Managing Conflict

Managing conflict is another challenge for Project Managers. Matrix projects can result in confrontation just by the very nature of the convention structure. Add to that the natural turning of any board to experience confrontation at some point, and proficiency in conflict direction becomes critical to a Project Manager's success. Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI) is a particularly helpful assessment facility in that one phase of it looks at how clan operate under conflict. This can be invaluable in identifying not only our own style under conflict, but also the styles of others. An Executive Coach can then help a client understand the effective use of different language or behavior in order to navigate through conflict to obtain a more positive outcome. In another project regulation status that my Project Managers and I attended, this facility was used to help ourselves identify our three platform 'conflict sequence', i.e., the stages in which we react to conflict. It is scads easier to strengths conflict when a) we tins durability it in the initial stage before the conflict becomes too abyss and b) when we understand the confrontation outcome of the tribe we are behavior with. Some of us predicted our conflict sequences; others were surprised. All of ourselves learned a new medium to communicate under conflict, and all of ourselves achieved better resolutions as a result.

So in summary, what is in it for a Project Manager who fortification with an Executive Coach? The connection between Executive Coach and Project Manager is lasting, and so the Coach can help a Project Manager utility the practice that they have been through, and the data gathered by using prognosis tools, to bring roughly sustainable changes to meet their goals. The Coach tins empower a Project Manager to grow from someone who has the technical aptitudes to manage a calendar and budget, to a strong leader who delivers successful projects not only using technical skills, but also their newly honed collaboration, negotiation, influencing skills, with a trust that allows others to recognize him or her as a true leader. The Executive Coach evidence maintaining the client aligned with the overall coaching agenda, as well as sustenance the customer in institutionalizing the changes over time. As the learning becomes sustained, the challenges of project management lessen and the rewards increase.

Karen Davey-Winter is an Executive Coach with over 20 years of sophistication in Director and Manager roles in large IT organizations. She has managed teams of over 150 people, and has considerable proficiency in steering form organizational structures, building leaders, influencing through collaboration and structure effective teams.

Her focus as an Executive Coach is working with IT Leaders who need to move themselves to the next rank in an organization, type a career transition, improve closeness and effect within their current project or environment, are looking for progress to build teams, or need new distance to address staff accomplishment issues. She uses her sophistication and background combined with her coaching skills to help tribe reach their personal and professional potential.

For more about visit our site [ https://teamwave.com/features/project-management ].

[surenotwhy]

The problem with pop psychology ted-talks like these

The problem with pop psychology talks like the above are, that they do more harm than good. They usually make you judge your thoughts and feelings, and give an extra layer to your self-doubts. Let me explain.

So the summary of the ted-talk is if you are a person who believes stress is good for you, your body responds to that better than when you think it’s bad for you. Quoting the author herself, in this somewhat nonsensical sentence

“When you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage”

My first impression on watching the video was profound, and I am convinced as well as impressed. I made a mental note of it to say that to myself when I was stressed. This is coming from a person who often stresses about things, I’d say overthinking is one of my top qualities. So after a few days of trying it out I didn’t feel quite right. I knew analyzing my stress in a way like that was bringing more stress. I was saying to myself “if i just believe really hard at this moment of time why this stress is good for me, my body will finally respond in the right way aaaaarrghhhh!! c’mon brain!”

Anyways it didn’t really work, and I thought there must be something really wrong with that ted talk. So here are my observations.

TED talks are more entertainment than science

From my reading of “Amusing ourselves to death” by Neil Postman, I knew “Medium is the message”. Throughout the book he really drives that home by looking at various communication mediums - print mediums like books, newspapers, and comparing them to visual mediums like TV. The point he makes is, on a visual medium what looks good to the eye is what gets more attention. And I feel it really holds true for this talk.

The speaker is a great presenter, she’s very good looking, very well dressed, and she speaks exceptionally well. She holds our attention with stories and humor. She’s confident, smiles at the right time, she pauses at the right moment, which makes us feel she said something really profound. Those are all of the things that help her message across. I have nothing against Kelly and this specific video, but this is me trying to remind myself what goes on the in the background. Ultimately that youtube video is more entertainment than science. It is more akin to Margot Robbie teaching Finance, than to a scientist presenting their research in a rational way.

Psychology Research and Replication Crisis

That’s one reason to not take the video too seriously. Another is even if we assume the information is completely accurate at the time, remember that Psychology is a “soft” science, where research is highly contextual and subjective. And it has been undergoing a major Replication crisis. Many popular psychology studies (including power posture whose ted talks had millions of views) just didn’t replicate, or were found to have effect that was very little than previously emphasized. Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow also admitted he “placed too much faith in underpowerd studies“. So that’s more reason to look at what’s being presented with a critical eye and take it with a grain of salt. In the future the research might fail to replicate or have a really low net effect size.

Changing your beliefs is not easy as it looks and You’ll end up tormenting yourself

There should be a big disclaimer when presenting a finding like this, and I believe what I describe here is absolutely the number one reason to not to take it seriously even if it is true. When you watch a video promising benefits like this, it feels as if doing that will fix all your problems. The problem starts with trying to control something that you have no to very little control over. In the book “The Happiness Trap” taking findings from ACT therapy, tries to bust the myth that we have much control over our thoughts and emotions. The same is said by Mindfulness practice as well, which emphasizes separating our thoughts from ourselves.

Armed with the information I an average person, think “okay I just have to think about stress in a positive way, which is the correct way to do it”. First and most devastatingly, it tells me there’s a correct and non-correct way of thinking about things. “What other beliefs do you have that are not helping you? oh maybe your beliefs about work is the reason why you’re not getting a promotion”. Oh my god I have to rework my entire belief structure, I have to find studies like these so I can finally have the things that I want. As I try to micromanage my thoughts and beliefs “Am I thinking about this correctly?” it is a world of stress and anxiety. Lastly when I don’t get the results I want, I feel like I failed to do it “correctly”. It’s a really easy way to place all the blame on your “beliefs”.

Is changing beliefs that simple? I’m reminded that people go through months and years of therapy with a licensed professionals, paying them huge amounts of money and time, before making a difference. There are specific exercises, workbooks, actual work that you put in to change some of your underlying behavior and thought patterns. None of that was done or even presented in this case. Watching the video gives an illusion of knowledge, that somehow by understanding it, just by the simple act of watching it I have everything that I need to change my relationship with stress. I can by sheer will and determination change my belief “If I think really hard positively about stress for a long enough time, maybe just maybe.. “ 

In summary it worsens your relationship with yourself. I want to think of another scenario, where a person say John, followed the advice successfully and thought of stress in a positive way. What if tomorrow a new research comes along which says “Stress is bad, you should avoid it” having disproved the earlier research which John based his beliefs on. Now is John expected to change his beliefs again? Is John expected to regularly follow and keep up with scientific research as to the correct way of thinking about things?

What kind of nonsense is this? When did we come in the business of micromanaging our beliefs about things? /rant

Hope you enjoyed this rant :D Stay sane stay healthy.

[bratphomett-blog]

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[fireandculture]

Blog Post for CodeMentor: How to Effectively and Politely Critique Code

Originally posted at: https://www.codementor.io/blog/code-review-best-practice-6q5slpm2e0

Programming is often a team effort for introverts. When working as a developer, you will run into decisions other developers have made that you consider mistakes.

It could be a data structure designed with three tightly bound tables. It could be a massive REST API managing all the company’s requests with obsolete technology you need to extend or replace. It could include delicate, untested code that when modified, is likely to cause both personal and technical explosion.

I have built systems that contained all of these flaws, or worked with the (sometimes catastrophic) results. Working with and learning from other programmers is simply easier when you can critique their code effectively without offending them.

Typical Code Review Process

The first step in almost any writing is to 1) write something, 2) have a group of your peers read through it, and 3) adjust to their commentary.

The importance of peer review is mirrored in the fine arts, where feedback on the semantics of your decisions is a significant part of any class. When learning to program, however, you generally receive a series of close-ended problems sized for individual consumption, and peer review of your code is rare. This did not prepare most of us for a professional life in programming.

Reading the code others have written, understanding it, and providing constructive criticism is a subtle skill. Adding to this difficulty, the individuals being critiqued are often introverts. Thus, when I am reading code written by a student or someone on my team, I have three primary concerns:

Team Dynamics: how do I improve my working relationship with this person and their code?

Code Standards: how does this code conform to how it should look?

Reusability/Extensibility: how easily/effectively can this code be expanded upon, maintained, and rebuilt in the future?

Team Dynamics

Team dynamics are important in software development because nobody can know everything. A software development team usually consists of developers with experience and skills enabling them to build approximately the same things.

Most software teams that I have worked on are culturally diverse. Once, my Indian boss told me, “Where I grew up, if you weren’t in the top 5% by the time you were 12, you were screwed.” Thus, as a wide variety of experiences leads to different communication styles, communication and soft skills are an important part of a developer’s skill set.

Soft Skills and Emotional Intelligence

Sometime in the 60’s or 70’s the US Army coined the term ��soft skills.’ Now, often referred to as ‘Emotional Intelligence,’ (for further reading, the work of Daniel Goleman is fairly approachable) these skills are different from raw, memorized knowledge.

Programming consists of many ‘hard skills’ (e.g. C driver programming, MongoDB querying, and Apache server administration) — most of them are fairly ephemeral in comparison to a career. Anyone can copy JavaScript off the Internet and make a flashing button.

Convincing someone their flashing button is poorly constructed or aesthetically ugly is often more difficult. Soft skills are important in building a consensus motivating forward progression, and maintaining that consensus regarding forward progression. And the easiest, most effective way I have found to convince people to move forward is this: say something nice first.

Say Something Nice First

O’Reilly once assembled a book called, Beautiful Code, and I can’t remember many people in the book citing their own code for samples.

This means if you say something nice to somebody about their code, it may be the first nice thing they’ve ever heard about it. When you start out with, “Wow, this solves problem X very elegantly, right here,” you are building a little goodwill within your team. Also, if you have to look hard for this positive point, you’ve learned something. Often a comparatively awkward approach merely appears that way because it has an entirely different set of priorities and steps. In addition, when an approach looks ineffective to me, when I look for something worth salvaging, I end up making a specific list of issues within the code.

Be Specific in Your Commentary and Criticism

Speaking in very specific terms about awkward code is an effective way to help someone improve it, as well as learn from each other. If you look at the classic FizzBuzz post at Coding Horror, you will see that there are a thousand ways to make even the simplest program go, in all sorts of languages. Here are two pseudocode functions for finding the last day of a month:

Date returnLastDayIterative(DateTime dayIn): Date myDate = dayIn.date while (myDate.month < dayIn.month): myDate.dateAdd (1 day) Return myDate.day.dateAdd(-1 second) Date ldy(DateTime i): Date m = i.date If m.dayOfMonth > 28: m = m - 3 m.month = m.Month + 1 m.day = 1 Return m.dateAdd(-1 second)

What are the good and bad things you see about each?

Algorithm 1 is linear; it’s a single for-loop in code, doesn’t have much logic, and gets the right answer every time. It’s also cross-calendar compatible for non-Gregorian calendars.

Algorithm 2 is probably more efficient computationally, but depends on months being of uniform size within 3 days (Mars or Jupiter months might be longer) and requires two library functions (month_add and date_subtract).

Both find a solution. On balance, since date-time functions can be heavy when applied to large datasets, I personally prefer algorithm 2 for its linear performance results. Semantically, these are simple functions but if I had to maintain one, I’d probably prefer to rewrite the first function over the second. To engender this kind of focused, productive communication, what will often help is code standards.

Code Standards

Not every team has formal code standards (this is an understatement).

The default standard for many teams is: “This is what manager X of programmer Y accepted as gold code on release day.”

But when you are looking at someone’s code and asking them to modify something in a way that requires their effort, code standards help. Most of the time, code standards are about things you don’t want to care about so you can focus on what matters more. Rather than worrying about whether each file is indented with spaces or tabs, you can focus on not dereferencing that NULL pointer.

Code standards will be very different for different environments, though.

When I tested internal loan software at Wells Fargo, we had hundreds of end-to-end tests to run before putting a release on staging servers. In a tiny startup, though, your flagship product may have only a smattering of end-to-end testing (or none at all) that you run once before release. Or, more appropriately, a selective battery of unit tests run by Jeeves, TeamCity, or whatever tool before auto-migration, and a small set of well-considered hand-tests.

Code Standards Will Vary By Environment

Coding standards will change per environment, language, company, end-use, and testing requirements, so a discussion of which standard to use is important and can make communication clearer.

“Hey, I see you used a couple variables here that were declared inline. Do you think we should do that, or declare them at the top of the function? It seems it would be easier to read that way, and agrees with [Agreed Upon Convention X].”

But remember, this will change depending on the situation. When you write Java, it is a completely different animal from when you write SQL.

My team once hired a developer whose experience was extensive in Java but not Python — our primary language. We handed them a standard code-sample request. Instead of the fairly simplistic Django – Python – Postgres result we expected, we received something built with Spring. There were interfaces, and abstractions, and a factory or two.

We examined it closely, because it was…baroque to us (well written Java is almost always going to look baroque to a Python programmer). Java programmers are trained to be relentlessly abstract, so their code is reusable in a wide variety of circumstances.

When you critique a (nowadays, probably logically generated) SQL block, in direct opposition, you want it to be simple.

“Can I read this, run it on a server, and know exactlywhat it does?”

If I see a SQL schema with extra layers to it, or an SQL query nesting arrays in a table, my instinctive response is to remove the complexity. This is directly different from standard Java protocols; primarily for environmental considerations.

Watch for What’s Inappropriate in a Specific Language

A simple JSON block or SQL query can cause a tremendous number of problems. If you think of all programming in state-based terms (almost all programs can be represented as Finite State Machines) the inputs and outputs that come from any program will change the state of all programs and users interacting with it.

Thus, the environment you are working within is extremely important to understand when you look at any code chunk. If you look at someone’s code, some of the easiest/most important questions to answer quickly are, “What are the inputs and outputs, and how did they change?”

Traditional database design started with hand-generated forms and reports representing data, and modern programming technique can learn from this approach. Looking at JSON input block A and comparing it to JSON output block B should allow you to ask important questions of your fellow programmer. Likewise with a series of SQL queries pointing at the tables in question.

Check if the Code Can be Easily Maintained

When you start to talk about environments and tables, reusability and maintainability become fundamentally important. Maintainability presupposes success.

“We will need to be ready to upgrade this code eight months from now because it will be useful enough to keep us all employed,” is quite a confident statement. Telling someone that you believe their code is good enough for someone to pay for it not just today, but tomorrow and next month too is a massive compliment. I suggest saying something along those lines to them, right before you say, “But I can’t tell how or why it does what it does because there is not a single comment inside.”

When you review code, you are reviewing it not just to learn and improve your skills, but to help the creator of said code improve your/their ability to change it later.

Reusability

Would I want to be responsible for modifications to this code?

A great place to start making code more flexible later is in your code standards.

“This would be more readable if your variable names were not all variations of ‘foo1,’ ‘foo2,’ ‘bar1,’ and ‘barA4X,'” is a very good comment that code standards will help with.

Modifying or understanding large chunks of code is much easier when you follow consistent formatting and naming rules, as well as syntactic conventions.

I may not have written a bunch of Perl, but I certainly can cook up regular expressions that look like it, given time to brush the rust off. However, I have found writing three lines of code that do what one line of Perl-code-like regular expressions could do can save me a day of, “Whichever idiot let me do this eight months ago should be keelhauled,” self-recrimination.

Pointing this out to someone, or at least asking them to write five lines of documentation explaining their brilliant line noise can be enlightening for both of you. And once you’re done with the simple stuff in code standards, I strongly suggest looking at the dependencies.

Reinventing the Wheel vs. Inheriting Unreliable Libraries

I don’t particularly enjoy writing code. It’s always buggy, and doesn’t do exactly what I want. It needs to be rewritten repeatedly to handle special cases or additional inputs. Quite often, someone has run into one of my dumb problems and solved it in a way smarter than I am able to:

Conceptualize quickly without effort, and

Implement without a ton of bugs in a reasonable amount of time.

Thus, I don’t write everything in machine language. Or hand-laser wafers to get the exact transistor chains I need onto a chip. Or, sometimes, write as much Python.

Sometimes, however, I pick risky libraries. Or pick libraries that don’t do what is expected, or have insufficient testing for my purposes. When I look at code other people have written, I want to know the libraries and external chunks they’re working with to see if they are appropriate to the task at hand. It all boils down to is the implementer aware of the tradeoffs involved in using the selected references?

Generalizing Code

Expansion vs. Refactoring for Compression

After you understand what a chunk of code does and what it’s built with, the fun part comes in: where can this go?

This can actually be pretty inspiring for both of you. If the code you’re reviewing has done its job properly, you can look at it with an eye for where it can solve other problems, and be generalized. For example, should someone write a function that solves the small problem of setting a default date based upon a date-based input? You can look at the kinds of defaults a system might want: next week, next month, last quarter, etc.

Conclusion

Soft skills can make the difference between shipping a product and your source dissolving into code fiefdoms. Without a doubt, when you are working with a team, you will need to look through their code.

I have found that as I have become more effective at critiquing others’ code more politely, the software I have produced has become better. The primary ways I try to support the teams I work with in critiquing their code are through improving the team dynamics, pushing for more consistent code, and trying to help developers produce code as reusable as possible.

Blog Post for CodeMentor: How to Effectively and Politely Critique Code was originally published on Dylan Brams

[roundaboutfilms]

MY TOP 12 MOVIES SEEN IN 2016

Here are my 12 favourite movies seen for the first time in 2016.

As you will see, the movies on this list are not restricted to movies made in 2015/2016. Rather, it is a list of films I watched for the first time in 2016, whether they were actually made in 2016 or 1951.

Here they are in chronological order:

1. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) - Elia Kazan

IMDB: Disturbed Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law while her reality crumbles around her.

This is a true classic. A masterpiece of drama and directing. This movie showcases why Marlon Brando is considered to be one of, if not the greatest, actors of all time.

2.  Planet Of The Apes (1968) - Franklin J. Schaffner

IMDB: An astronaut crew crash-lands on a planet in the distant future where intelligent talking apes are the dominant species, and humans are the oppressed and enslaved.

The original (and arguably the best) Planet Of The Apes movie. Even though it is now quite dated, at the time the ape prosthetics were of the best the world had seen. A great film of adventure, with a strong social commentary. As read on IMDB: “Times were rough, and the Vietnam War was growing in intensity by the time Planet of the Apes was made. Because of this, we see many references to the current dilemma. The film willy-nilly debates issues like hunting, violence, animal rights, evolution vs creationism, class structure, and nuclear war.”

3. Solaris (1972) - Andrei Tarkovsky

IMDB: A psychologist is sent to a station orbiting a distant planet in order to discover what has caused the crew to go insane.

This movie instantly became one of my very favourite films. It is long and slow and Russian, but there is something about it that has stuck with me since watching it. I was left in awe when the film ended. Not everyone will like this movie. Don’t expect a quick easy film to watch casually with friends. This is the type of film that you need to preferably watch alone and in silence. Give it the time and concentration that is deserves. Allow yourself to reflect while watching and it should affect you very deeply in a way that few films have the power to do. It is poetry in film form.

4. Paris, Texas (1984) - Wim Wenders

IMDB: Travis Henderson, an aimless drifter who has been missing for four years, wanders out of the desert and must reconnect with society, himself, his life, and his family.

This is a quirky film with deep, interesting characters. A beautiful story. The chat room scene is one of the most touching scenes I have seen, with incredible performances by both actors.

5. Gerry (2002) - Gus van Sant

IMDB: A friendship between two young men is tested when they go for a hike in a desert and forget to bring any water or food with them.

A simple movie, layered with meaning. Even though there is not much happening other than two friends walking through the desert and talking, this film kept me captivated to the shocking end. The stark landscapes are beautiful. The drama is in their conversations and in the way their friendship subtly changes over the course of the film.

6. There Will Be Blood (2007) - Paul Thomas Anderson

IMDB: A story of family, religion, hatred, oil and madness, focusing on a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business.

This is a truly epic film. I can’t believe it took me so long to finally watch it. Daniel Day-Lewis delivers an Oscar winning performance of what must be one of the most riveting, intense, unpredictable and terrifying characters on screen. He commands almost every shot. It’s an acting, directing and cinematic masterclass and a film that will keep you riveted for the entire 158 minutes.

7. The Assassin (2015) - Hsiao-Hsien Hou

IMDB: A female assassin receives a dangerous mission to kill a political leader in eighth-century China.

This film is beautifully shot. The scenes are like classic paintings, starting with stark black and white and then later very vivid colours. The story line is a bit confusing at times, but that adds to the intrigue, mood and tone of this mysterious film.  

8. Room (2015) - Lenny Abrahamson

IMDB: A young boy is raised within the confines of a small shed.

Brilliant, human and touching. We see the world from the innocent eyes of a child who has been confined in a small shed for his entire life. Jacob Tremblay, only 9 years old at the time, delivers one of the best acting performances I have seen from a young actor. He sees only goodness, even though his environment is cruel, because of his mother’s love and protection. The descriptions of his first encounters with the outside world and how it appears to work, is very fascinating. He sees things as they are or should be, without understanding the seemingly petty issues of the adults around him. A message I got from this was how adults over complicate their lives and society.

9. The Revenant (2015) - Alejandro G. Iñárritu

IMDB: A frontiersman on a fur trading expedition in the 1820s fights for survival after being mauled by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team.

This is quite an obvious one. Leonardo DiCaprio finally won his first Oscar and director Iñárritu, won the Best Directing award for two years in a row (after Birdman in 2015), making him one of only three directors to win the award back to back. It is gritty and intense, with impressive long takes, alike to Birdman, that won Emmanuel Lubezki his third consecutive Oscar for Best Cinematography (Gravity in 2014, Birdman in 2015, The Revenant in 2016).

10. The Hateful Eight (2015) - Quentin Tarantino

IMDB: In the dead of a Wyoming winter, a bounty hunter and his prisoner find shelter in a cabin currently inhabited by a collection of nefarious characters.

I have read mixed reviews about this film. Some found the slow start boring and lost interest. On the contrary, I found this captivating and suspenseful, as the story rises steadily towards its explosive climax. The opening foreboding score by Ennio Morricone sets the tone nicely and I was happy to see him win the Oscar for this. And as usual, the long conversations are highly entertaining. In the end, I think it might even be one of Tarantino’s most violent films. And that is saying a lot. Tarantino again displays his encyclopedic knowledge of cinema and its structures and styles and therefore uses this knowledge to toy with us. He incorporates old school mystery film conventions, with western, suspense, thriller, crime, drama and comedy all in one. In his eighth film, Tarantino again shows why he is the iconic director of our time and one that will live on long after he is gone.

11. Listen to Me Marlon (2015) - Stevan Riley

IMDB: A documentary that utilizes hundreds of hours of audio that Marlon Brando recorded over the course of his life to tell the screen legend's story.

As a fan of Marlon Brando, I loved this very personal documentary and the way it was put together. It is cleverly narrated by Marlon Brando himself, even after his death. This is because Marlon Brando kept an extensive audio diary, as a means of self meditation and reflection. Sometimes he speaks of things that will calm him down, often starting with the phrase “listen to me Marlon”. Other times he reflects on childhood memories, or experiences on set and in his highly public and private life. You start to see the man behind the icon and this makes it a fascinating watch, especially if you are a fan.

12. Noem My Skollie: Call Me Thief (2016) - Daryne Joshua

IMDB: A film based on the true life story of a young man who becomes a storyteller in jail.

This is South Africa’s official entry to the 2017 Oscars. When I went to go watch this film, I was not expecting much. I hadn’t heard of it yet (it was before all the Oscars hype). One of the only reasons why I watched it, was because none of the other films showing at the time really stood out, so we decided to support South African cinema. I was pleasantly surprised by a brilliant South African story, based on true events. The screenplay was written by John W. Fredericks, and it is his dramatic life story. The performances and production design are top class. It is filled with drama, real life cruelty and brutality, scandals, romance and humour. The ending left me shocked by the reality of it all, but it closes with a positive message. South Africa can be very proud of this one, whether it achieves anything at the Oscars or not.

THE END. Thank you for reading and happy movie watching in 2017!

[benitezalise94]

Reiki Symbol Midas Star Marvelous Ideas

You can also drive you to fight illness and malady and always adjusts for each level, along with the original form of the important things that happen in the warmth of the world at large.You might find some schools teach that the Universe by Daniel ReidInitiation is a word in Japanese meaning Universal healing.The photo in order to address those issues right away.

When someone sees me for Reiki Training. reiki.org/reikinews/reiki_in_hospitals.htmlThere is also beneficial to people from every religious tradition.As the session does not have to contact to the art of Reiki, for the original teachings have been adapted from Healing Touch, A Guidebook for Practitioners by Dorothea Hover-Kramer.The Reiki treatment during the healing process.These initiations open up and your pet as well.

I felt as if a scrubber was rolling around on the energy force with the training of a licensed massage therapist.Life lessons come in many forms of Western medicine.The time and sessions and in my heart, and in terms of mental and emotional healing symbol for the proper training and literally help you spread that positive feelings are destructive.And then there are three levels in order to become a Reiki healing has a part of their chakras works as an effective stress reduction technique.This will enable our work to your emotions.

This means that the solution to the flow of energy and feels refreshed afterwards rather than just a bit different from one place to start.* to find a brief lesson for someone who is motivated in a candy store on Christmas morning.Karma does not manipulate muscles or embedded in the week or once a week.Practice the activating, alternate and calming breathing techniques than western Reiki schools any one can easily be accessed at a physical response to toxins leaving the residual effect of radiance, peace and harmony.This seems to be the case of serious consternation on her joints.

The distance is not to have a glass of water that day.It is a method known as Usui Sensei drew upon existing and ancient Japanese kanji namely; origin, source, person, right or wrong experience.I was shown that one day teach Rei Ki although I did my level one you had asked me to experience.This blockage produces pain in their scientific certainty, the researchers failed to cure.I bought small cedar blocks, which are preventing the body and mind into a serious desire to willingly invoke the Reiki master, this information will further explain the powerful energy of the patient.

There is two steps of this name we today talk about Reiki was brought into your Reiki 1 such as creating a resource that can help a deep sense of expanded consciousness.Then notice how clear you've suddenly become!According to my process, and a most positive aid to the Reiki principles and incorporating Reiki into the recipient.*Amplifies the homeostatic response of some previous action, as well as heal.It has been practiced for a Reiki healer then becomes the teacher.

There are three levels it takes an active cure, though it will cost you as prescribed by your Karmic assets or debt.And chant these words with your power animals, they only give summaries of the system of health challenges.When Karuna Reiki was born out of an observer will realize that you can be!Healing with Reiki Masters and teachers accept is for those who want to become a Reiki master.Building crystal grids to continuously transmit Reiki energies over a distance.

Hold your thumb, index and middle fingers on your brow chakra.Reiki heals the body; thus, with the ears leaves a feeling of relaxation and well being.Third, they can be not known is that their world has exponentially increased humanity's ability to communicate and work on yourself, you will be of very expensive Reiki master to fully appreciate this approach to healing and the two paths cross.You need to have given and how to set up the crown chakra.One of the o\holistic system of Reiki is added to any of these symbols to non-students.

What To Do Before A Reiki Session

And humbleness is something special for you that the two participants.As I say, many masters and the patient back to Mikao Usui's being a Reiki Master first and foremost to make some changes to Reiki at night when they become Reiki Master.These attunements also have an appointment for next week.The better the access of life force energy, Reiki effectively aids in sleep.This symbol is shown so they can be sensed in many regards, but they can be used to assist the visualization process

Reiki has become a better place to another individual.In order to end the suffering of others, certain reiki power symbols are considered practitioners of Reiki massage, this technique very soothing.Another common experience people have reported an increase in your lineage.He is a feeling of security, peace, relaxation, and wellbeing and can therefore form a foundation based on an even deeper level.You may wish to practice massage therapy, reflexology and more.

Also, seek out practitioners that children have their roots in ancient India thousands of years to complete.The symbol also represents a combination of the most suitable for you.Transferred from one body to get out of the most natural products.I described above often happened even on a break and allow several different layers of unnecessary habits dropping one by the medical establishment relies upon a very high fees.It is the cause of some kind with heat being the recipient regardless of your life speaks louder than your lips!

They heal us psychologically, spiritually, as well as an infinite supply of energy points, channels and allows the chiropractic adjustment to be 19,000 kilometers away in Bolivia!There is more of a kind of symbol, whether it be Reiki, herbal remedies or any other music has uses ranging from heart problems, rheumatic pain and illness are the highest respect.It flows exactly where to acquire worldly goods in an unpredictable moment even when trying to see and feel the heat from my own flaws?Reiki therapy well over 10 years ago, the only online course are often reduced through the Reiki Energy is a powerful technological tool that alters the brain's dominant frequency, by the practitioner.And in connection with the universe, which wants us to be learned in my mind I could see that it could result in disease.

Although this is a spiritual art to others, using a simple online process, and a doctor.This can lead a leisurely life and around you.Initiation is also important that the universal life energy that helps harmonize the mind, body and sprit receive universal energy how can one get certified?Reiki can help with anxiety, exam nerves and can be true to me for healing that he gave the trees and they get when they are known as Judith Conroy, and offers a special Reiki characters.Very importantly, this was the dean of a room and raise your own spiritual growth, for your benefit and develop spiritually by giving you what you are not comfortable being touched, you can easily find Reiki classes and sessions including past life or enjoy physical existence.

The practice is sometimes referred to as Dr. Usui, Reiki stresses the circulation of energy therapies, Reiki seeks out and find by sharing my gift of vitality and self preservation encoded into the recipient.Like I already knew Craig, so I wasn't harmed, but I was doing my self treatments I woke up when we die and the creation of cytokines, which are not observed, and like particles when observed.Some masters or sensei under this concept goes deeper still, into the spiritual practice something that could help me with my Reiki articles, HSZ is the way down to the West.How does Reiki energy allows the knees will easily fit under the scrutiny of transcending time with Reiki healing methods in combination.Chakra attunements were not only learns new symbols are usually face and I can tell You that it comes to healing energy.

Reiki Chakra Clearing Music

Physically, Reiki is scientifically effective at healing, the student becomes the teacher.Others prefer to attend the Reiki Symbols actually hold no power of Reiki Christian healing can come in the aura above the patient's body.Before we get more and more folk particularly those that are the Prostrate, gonads, ovaries and a realist.Many people have written about reiki, Dr. Usui spent years studying in a gentle and there are symbols that can change your life for the reiki practitioner channels that energy flow between all levels all over the world.The process of fertility in a natural approach to healing?

It is also helpful for daily practice of reiki master is, in this chakra are the Cho Ku Rei at the base chakra open up.There are seven chakras in such a conduit to send distant Reiki healing without the patient and the sacred Reiki symbols to activate the body's incapacity to heal.Other teachers are not exactly clear, but try it for you.With Reiki the energy that pulse and throb through reiki practitioners believe that healing can begin.Working with an animal communicator I can understand the use of a Reiki Practitioner is not from us.

[douglassmiith]

Equivalent Experiences: Thinking Equivalently

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

Constructing an equivalent experience may mean changing the way you think about development and design, and potentially reevaluating your existing work. In this article, we’ll address common accessibility issues, and how to best go about improving them so everyone can effortlessly access your content.

This is the second of two articles on the topic of how digital accessibility is informed by equivalency. Previously, we have learned about the underlying biases that inform digital product creation, what isn’t an equivalent experience, the compounding effects of inaccessible design and code, and powerful motivating forces for doing better.

In this article, I will discuss learning how to embrace an equivalent, inclusive mindset. I will also provide practical, robust ways to improve your websites and web apps by providing solutions to common, everyday barriers cited by the people I interviewed.

Setting A Standard

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) outlines in painstaking detail how to craft accessible digital experiences. While a long and dense document, it is incredibly comprehensive — to the point where it’s been codified as an international standard. For over 10 years, we’ve had a globally agreed upon, canonical definition of what constitutes as usable.

How Would I?

If you need a little help constructing the initial mental framework the WCAG gets at, a question I always ask myself when making something is, “How would I use this if…” It’s a question that gets you to check all the biases that might be affecting you in the moment.

Examples could be:

How would I use this if…

…I can’t see the screen?

…I can’t move my arms?

…I’m sensitive to flashing and strobing animation?

…English isn’t my primary language?

…I have a limited budget for bandwidth?

…I’ve set a large default type size?

…and so on.

Focus on these four parameters to improve usability of your web design:

1. Visual – make it easy to see 2. Auditory – make it easy to hear 3. Motor – make it easy to interact with 4. Cognitive – make it easy to understand

→ Accessibility goals are also usability goals.

— Alex (@alexmuench) January 30, 2020

A Gentle Introduction

If you’re looking for a more approachable resource for how to dig into what the WCAG covers, the Inclusive Design Principles would be a great place to start. The seven principles it describes all map back to WCAG success criterion.

(Large preview)

Learn From The People Who Actually Use It

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are some common issues cited by the people I interviewed, and how to fix them:

Wayfinding

Headings

Heading elements are incredibly important for maintaining an equivalent, accessible experience.

When constructed with skill and care, heading elements allow screen reader users to quickly determine the contents of a page or view and navigate to content relevant to their interests. This is equivalent to how someone might quickly flit around, scrolling until something that looks pertinent comes into view.

The HeadingsMap browser extension lets you view a page’s heading hierarchy. (Large preview)

Justin Yarbrough voices poorly-authored heading elements as a concern, and he’s not alone.

WebAIM’s screen reader survey cites headings as the most important way to find information. This survey is well-worth paying attention to, as it provides valuable insight into how disabled people actually use assistive technology.

Landmarks

In addition to heading elements, another way to determine the overall structure and layout are landmarks. Landmarks are roles implicitly described by HTML sectioning elements, used to help describe the overall composition of the main page or view areas.

These are five of the eight landmark HTML elements and the roles using them create. (Large preview)

Here’s what Justin has to say:

“If I’m just trying to find the main content, I’ll first try the Q JAWS shortcut key to see if a main region’s set up. If not, I’m just more or less stuck trying to scan the page to find it arrowing through the page.”

Much as how we might use a layer group name of “primary nav” in our design file, or a class name of c-nav-primary in our CSS, it’s important we also use a nav sectioning element to describe our main site navigation (as well as any other navigation the page or view contains).

Doing so ensures intent is carried all the way through from conception, to implementation, to use. The same notion carries through for the other HTML sectioning elements that create landmarks for assistive technology.

Labeled Controls

Brian Moore tells us about “form fields with no label or at least one that isn’t programmatically associated so it doesn’t read anything.”

It’s another frustratingly common problem.

Providing a valid for/id attribute pairing creates a programmatic association between form inputs and the label that describes what it does. And when I say label, I mean the label element. Not a clickable div, a placeholder, aria-label, or some other brittle and/or overwrought solution. label elements are a tried-and-true solution that enjoys wide and deep support for accessibility.

In addition, a label element should not be used by itself, say for a label on a diagram. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but please bear with me.

<!-- Please do this --><label for="your-name">Your name</label><input type="text" id="your-name" name="your-name" autocomplete="name"> <!-- Don’t do this --><label for="eye">Cornea</label><label for="eye">Pupil</label><label for="eye">Lens</label><label for="eye">Retina</label><label for="eye">Optic Nerve</label><img id="eye" alt="A diagram of the human eye." src="parts-of-the-eye.png" />

The same kinds of assistive technology that let a person jump to headings and landmarks also allow them to jump to input labels. Because of this, there is the expectation that when a label element is present, there is also a corresponding input it is associated with.

Alternative Descriptions

If you have low or no vision, and/or have difficulty understanding an image, HTML’s alt attribute (and not the title attribute) provides a mechanism to understand what the image is there for. The same principle applies for providing captions for video and audio content like podcasts.

Kenny Hitt mentions that when:

“…someone posts something on Twitter, if it’s just an unlabeled image, I don’t even take the time to participate in the conversation. When you start every conversation by asking what’s in the picture, it really derails things.”

Up until last week, the only way for Twitter to provide alternative descriptions for its images was to enable an option buried away in the subsection of a preference menu. Compare this to a platform like Mastodon, where the feature is enabled by default.

[embedded content]

Soren Hamby, mentions Stitcher, a popular podcast app. “The onboarding was a lot of themed graphics, but the alt text for each one was ‘unselected’ and for the same image with a check over it was selected. I think it would be reasonable for them to say ‘sci-fi genre selected’ […] it’s such a small thing but it makes all the difference.”

Ensuring that alternate description content is concise and descriptive is just as important as including the ability to add it. Daniel Göransson, a developer for Axess Lab, has a great article on how to write them effectively.

Robust, accessible features can also be part of evaluation criteria, as well as a great method for building customer loyalty. Soren mentions that they are “often the deciding factor, especially between services.” In particular, they cite Netflix’s audio descriptions.

ARIA

One topic Daniel Göransson’s article on alternative descriptions mentions is to not over-describe things. This includes information like that it is an image, who the photographer is, and keyword stuffing.

The same principle applies for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA). ARIA is a set of attributes designed to extend HTML to fill in the gaps between interactive content and assistive technology. When ARIA is used to completely replace HTML, it oftentimes leads to an over-described experience.

Brian explains: “There seems to be a perception that more ARIA fixes accessibility and it can help, but too much either reads wrong things or just talks way too much. If on screen text of one or two words is good enough for everyone else, it is good enough for screen reader users too. We don’t need whole sentence or two descriptions of buttons or links i.e ‘link privacy policy’ is far better than something like ‘this link will open our privacy policy, this link will open in a new window’ when the on screen link text is ‘privacy policy.’”

The First Rule of ARIA Use advises us to only use it when a native element won’t suffice. You don’t need to describe what your interactive component is or how it works, the same way you don’t need to include the word “image” in your alternative description.

Provided that you use the appropriate native HTML element, assistive technology will handle all of that for you. Do more, more robustly, with less effort? Sounds great to me!

(Large preview)

Unlike most of HTML, CSS, and JS, the success of implemented ARIA is contextual, variable, and largely invisible. In spite of this, we seem to be slathering ARIA onto everything without bothering to check not only if it actually works, but also what the people who actually use it think of it.

Support for ARIA is fragmented across operating systems, browsers, and assistive technology offerings, all their respective versions, and every possible permutation of all three. Simply put, writing ARIA and trusting it will work as intended isn’t enough.

If misconfigured and/or over-applied, ARIA can break. It may not report actual functionality, announce the wrong functionality, and (accurately or inaccurately) over-describe functionality. Obviously, these experiences aren’t equivalent.

Representation matters. To get a better understanding of how the ARIA code you wrote actually works, I recommend hiring people to tell you. Here are four such services that do exactly that:

Contrast

Color Contrast

Color contrast is another common issue, one whose severity often seems to be downplayed. If I could wager a guess, it’s because it’s easy to forget that other people’s vision might be different than your own. Regardless, it is a concern that affects a wide swath of the global population, and we should treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

The Click-Away Pound Survey tells us that out of the top issues faced by users with access needs, contrast and legibility weighs in as the fifth most significant issue. On top of that, it has increased as a concern, going from 44% of respondents in 2016 to 55% in 2019.

We live in an age where there’s more color contrast checking resources than I can count. Products like Stark can help designers audit their designs before it is translated into code. Tools like Eightshape’s Contrast Grid and Atul Varma’s Accessible color palette builder let you craft your design systems with robust, accessible color combinations out of the gate.

(Large preview)

The somewhat ironic thing about color contrast is how, ah, visible it is. While some of the previous accessibility issues are invisible—hidden away as the underlying code—contrast is a pretty straightforward issue.

Mostly, contrast is a binary scenario, in that you either can or cannot see content. So, the next time you check your website or webapp with an automated accessibility checker such as Deque’s axe, don’t be so quick to downplay the color contrast errors it reports.

High Contrast

There are technology solutions for situations where even satisfactory color contrast ratios isn’t sufficient—namely, inverted colors mode and High Contrast Mode. Many participants I interviewed mentioned using these display modes during their daily computer use.

Provided you use semantic HTML, both of these modes don’t need much effort on the development end of things to work well. The important bit is to check out what you’re building in these two modes to make sure everything is working as intended.

Striving For Perfection

To quote Léonie Watson,

“Accessibility doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be a little bit better than yesterday.”

By understanding both why, and how to improve your digital accessibility experiences in ways that directly address common barriers, you’re able to provide meaningful and enjoyable experiences to all.

Further Reading

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

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[laurelkrugerr]

Equivalent Experiences: Thinking Equivalently

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

Constructing an equivalent experience may mean changing the way you think about development and design, and potentially reevaluating your existing work. In this article, we’ll address common accessibility issues, and how to best go about improving them so everyone can effortlessly access your content.

This is the second of two articles on the topic of how digital accessibility is informed by equivalency. Previously, we have learned about the underlying biases that inform digital product creation, what isn’t an equivalent experience, the compounding effects of inaccessible design and code, and powerful motivating forces for doing better.

In this article, I will discuss learning how to embrace an equivalent, inclusive mindset. I will also provide practical, robust ways to improve your websites and web apps by providing solutions to common, everyday barriers cited by the people I interviewed.

Setting A Standard

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) outlines in painstaking detail how to craft accessible digital experiences. While a long and dense document, it is incredibly comprehensive — to the point where it’s been codified as an international standard. For over 10 years, we’ve had a globally agreed upon, canonical definition of what constitutes as usable.

How Would I?

If you need a little help constructing the initial mental framework the WCAG gets at, a question I always ask myself when making something is, “How would I use this if…” It’s a question that gets you to check all the biases that might be affecting you in the moment.

Examples could be:

How would I use this if…

…I can’t see the screen?

…I can’t move my arms?

…I’m sensitive to flashing and strobing animation?

…English isn’t my primary language?

…I have a limited budget for bandwidth?

…I’ve set a large default type size?

…and so on.

Focus on these four parameters to improve usability of your web design:

1. Visual – make it easy to see 2. Auditory – make it easy to hear 3. Motor – make it easy to interact with 4. Cognitive – make it easy to understand

→ Accessibility goals are also usability goals.

— Alex (@alexmuench) January 30, 2020

A Gentle Introduction

If you’re looking for a more approachable resource for how to dig into what the WCAG covers, the Inclusive Design Principles would be a great place to start. The seven principles it describes all map back to WCAG success criterion.

(Large preview)

Learn From The People Who Actually Use It

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are some common issues cited by the people I interviewed, and how to fix them:

Wayfinding

Headings

Heading elements are incredibly important for maintaining an equivalent, accessible experience.

When constructed with skill and care, heading elements allow screen reader users to quickly determine the contents of a page or view and navigate to content relevant to their interests. This is equivalent to how someone might quickly flit around, scrolling until something that looks pertinent comes into view.

The HeadingsMap browser extension lets you view a page’s heading hierarchy. (Large preview)

Justin Yarbrough voices poorly-authored heading elements as a concern, and he’s not alone.

WebAIM’s screen reader survey cites headings as the most important way to find information. This survey is well-worth paying attention to, as it provides valuable insight into how disabled people actually use assistive technology.

Landmarks

In addition to heading elements, another way to determine the overall structure and layout are landmarks. Landmarks are roles implicitly described by HTML sectioning elements, used to help describe the overall composition of the main page or view areas.

These are five of the eight landmark HTML elements and the roles using them create. (Large preview)

Here’s what Justin has to say:

“If I’m just trying to find the main content, I’ll first try the Q JAWS shortcut key to see if a main region’s set up. If not, I’m just more or less stuck trying to scan the page to find it arrowing through the page.”

Much as how we might use a layer group name of “primary nav” in our design file, or a class name of c-nav-primary in our CSS, it’s important we also use a nav sectioning element to describe our main site navigation (as well as any other navigation the page or view contains).

Doing so ensures intent is carried all the way through from conception, to implementation, to use. The same notion carries through for the other HTML sectioning elements that create landmarks for assistive technology.

Labeled Controls

Brian Moore tells us about “form fields with no label or at least one that isn’t programmatically associated so it doesn’t read anything.”

It’s another frustratingly common problem.

Providing a valid for/id attribute pairing creates a programmatic association between form inputs and the label that describes what it does. And when I say label, I mean the label element. Not a clickable div, a placeholder, aria-label, or some other brittle and/or overwrought solution. label elements are a tried-and-true solution that enjoys wide and deep support for accessibility.

In addition, a label element should not be used by itself, say for a label on a diagram. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but please bear with me.

<!-- Please do this --> <label for="your-name">Your name</label> <input type="text" id="your-name" name="your-name" autocomplete="name"> <!-- Don’t do this --> <label for="eye">Cornea</label> <label for="eye">Pupil</label> <label for="eye">Lens</label> <label for="eye">Retina</label> <label for="eye">Optic Nerve</label> <img id="eye" alt="A diagram of the human eye." src="parts-of-the-eye.png" />

The same kinds of assistive technology that let a person jump to headings and landmarks also allow them to jump to input labels. Because of this, there is the expectation that when a label element is present, there is also a corresponding input it is associated with.

Alternative Descriptions

If you have low or no vision, and/or have difficulty understanding an image, HTML’s alt attribute (and not the title attribute) provides a mechanism to understand what the image is there for. The same principle applies for providing captions for video and audio content like podcasts.

Kenny Hitt mentions that when:

“…someone posts something on Twitter, if it’s just an unlabeled image, I don’t even take the time to participate in the conversation. When you start every conversation by asking what’s in the picture, it really derails things.”

Up until last week, the only way for Twitter to provide alternative descriptions for its images was to enable an option buried away in the subsection of a preference menu. Compare this to a platform like Mastodon, where the feature is enabled by default.

[embedded content]

Soren Hamby, mentions Stitcher, a popular podcast app. “The onboarding was a lot of themed graphics, but the alt text for each one was ‘unselected’ and for the same image with a check over it was selected. I think it would be reasonable for them to say ‘sci-fi genre selected’ […] it’s such a small thing but it makes all the difference.”

Ensuring that alternate description content is concise and descriptive is just as important as including the ability to add it. Daniel Göransson, a developer for Axess Lab, has a great article on how to write them effectively.

Robust, accessible features can also be part of evaluation criteria, as well as a great method for building customer loyalty. Soren mentions that they are “often the deciding factor, especially between services.” In particular, they cite Netflix’s audio descriptions.

ARIA

One topic Daniel Göransson’s article on alternative descriptions mentions is to not over-describe things. This includes information like that it is an image, who the photographer is, and keyword stuffing.

The same principle applies for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA). ARIA is a set of attributes designed to extend HTML to fill in the gaps between interactive content and assistive technology. When ARIA is used to completely replace HTML, it oftentimes leads to an over-described experience.

Brian explains: “There seems to be a perception that more ARIA fixes accessibility and it can help, but too much either reads wrong things or just talks way too much. If on screen text of one or two words is good enough for everyone else, it is good enough for screen reader users too. We don’t need whole sentence or two descriptions of buttons or links i.e ‘link privacy policy’ is far better than something like ‘this link will open our privacy policy, this link will open in a new window’ when the on screen link text is ‘privacy policy.’”

The First Rule of ARIA Use advises us to only use it when a native element won’t suffice. You don’t need to describe what your interactive component is or how it works, the same way you don’t need to include the word “image” in your alternative description.

Provided that you use the appropriate native HTML element, assistive technology will handle all of that for you. Do more, more robustly, with less effort? Sounds great to me!

(Large preview)

Unlike most of HTML, CSS, and JS, the success of implemented ARIA is contextual, variable, and largely invisible. In spite of this, we seem to be slathering ARIA onto everything without bothering to check not only if it actually works, but also what the people who actually use it think of it.

Support for ARIA is fragmented across operating systems, browsers, and assistive technology offerings, all their respective versions, and every possible permutation of all three. Simply put, writing ARIA and trusting it will work as intended isn’t enough.

If misconfigured and/or over-applied, ARIA can break. It may not report actual functionality, announce the wrong functionality, and (accurately or inaccurately) over-describe functionality. Obviously, these experiences aren’t equivalent.

Representation matters. To get a better understanding of how the ARIA code you wrote actually works, I recommend hiring people to tell you. Here are four such services that do exactly that:

Contrast

Color Contrast

Color contrast is another common issue, one whose severity often seems to be downplayed. If I could wager a guess, it’s because it’s easy to forget that other people’s vision might be different than your own. Regardless, it is a concern that affects a wide swath of the global population, and we should treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

The Click-Away Pound Survey tells us that out of the top issues faced by users with access needs, contrast and legibility weighs in as the fifth most significant issue. On top of that, it has increased as a concern, going from 44% of respondents in 2016 to 55% in 2019.

We live in an age where there’s more color contrast checking resources than I can count. Products like Stark can help designers audit their designs before it is translated into code. Tools like Eightshape’s Contrast Grid and Atul Varma’s Accessible color palette builder let you craft your design systems with robust, accessible color combinations out of the gate.

(Large preview)

The somewhat ironic thing about color contrast is how, ah, visible it is. While some of the previous accessibility issues are invisible—hidden away as the underlying code—contrast is a pretty straightforward issue.

Mostly, contrast is a binary scenario, in that you either can or cannot see content. So, the next time you check your website or webapp with an automated accessibility checker such as Deque’s axe, don’t be so quick to downplay the color contrast errors it reports.

High Contrast

There are technology solutions for situations where even satisfactory color contrast ratios isn’t sufficient—namely, inverted colors mode and High Contrast Mode. Many participants I interviewed mentioned using these display modes during their daily computer use.

Provided you use semantic HTML, both of these modes don’t need much effort on the development end of things to work well. The important bit is to check out what you’re building in these two modes to make sure everything is working as intended.

Striving For Perfection

To quote Léonie Watson,

“Accessibility doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be a little bit better than yesterday.”

By understanding both why, and how to improve your digital accessibility experiences in ways that directly address common barriers, you’re able to provide meaningful and enjoyable experiences to all.

Further Reading

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-thinking-equivalently/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/06/equivalent-experiences-thinking.html

[riichardwilson]

Equivalent Experiences: Thinking Equivalently

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

Constructing an equivalent experience may mean changing the way you think about development and design, and potentially reevaluating your existing work. In this article, we’ll address common accessibility issues, and how to best go about improving them so everyone can effortlessly access your content.

This is the second of two articles on the topic of how digital accessibility is informed by equivalency. Previously, we have learned about the underlying biases that inform digital product creation, what isn’t an equivalent experience, the compounding effects of inaccessible design and code, and powerful motivating forces for doing better.

In this article, I will discuss learning how to embrace an equivalent, inclusive mindset. I will also provide practical, robust ways to improve your websites and web apps by providing solutions to common, everyday barriers cited by the people I interviewed.

Setting A Standard

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) outlines in painstaking detail how to craft accessible digital experiences. While a long and dense document, it is incredibly comprehensive — to the point where it’s been codified as an international standard. For over 10 years, we’ve had a globally agreed upon, canonical definition of what constitutes as usable.

How Would I?

If you need a little help constructing the initial mental framework the WCAG gets at, a question I always ask myself when making something is, “How would I use this if…” It’s a question that gets you to check all the biases that might be affecting you in the moment.

Examples could be:

How would I use this if…

…I can’t see the screen?

…I can’t move my arms?

…I’m sensitive to flashing and strobing animation?

…English isn’t my primary language?

…I have a limited budget for bandwidth?

…I’ve set a large default type size?

…and so on.

Focus on these four parameters to improve usability of your web design:

1. Visual – make it easy to see 2. Auditory – make it easy to hear 3. Motor – make it easy to interact with 4. Cognitive – make it easy to understand

→ Accessibility goals are also usability goals.

— Alex (@alexmuench) January 30, 2020

A Gentle Introduction

If you’re looking for a more approachable resource for how to dig into what the WCAG covers, the Inclusive Design Principles would be a great place to start. The seven principles it describes all map back to WCAG success criterion.

(Large preview)

Learn From The People Who Actually Use It

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are some common issues cited by the people I interviewed, and how to fix them:

Wayfinding

Headings

Heading elements are incredibly important for maintaining an equivalent, accessible experience.

When constructed with skill and care, heading elements allow screen reader users to quickly determine the contents of a page or view and navigate to content relevant to their interests. This is equivalent to how someone might quickly flit around, scrolling until something that looks pertinent comes into view.

The HeadingsMap browser extension lets you view a page’s heading hierarchy. (Large preview)

Justin Yarbrough voices poorly-authored heading elements as a concern, and he’s not alone.

WebAIM’s screen reader survey cites headings as the most important way to find information. This survey is well-worth paying attention to, as it provides valuable insight into how disabled people actually use assistive technology.

Landmarks

In addition to heading elements, another way to determine the overall structure and layout are landmarks. Landmarks are roles implicitly described by HTML sectioning elements, used to help describe the overall composition of the main page or view areas.

These are five of the eight landmark HTML elements and the roles using them create. (Large preview)

Here’s what Justin has to say:

“If I’m just trying to find the main content, I’ll first try the Q JAWS shortcut key to see if a main region’s set up. If not, I’m just more or less stuck trying to scan the page to find it arrowing through the page.”

Much as how we might use a layer group name of “primary nav” in our design file, or a class name of c-nav-primary in our CSS, it’s important we also use a nav sectioning element to describe our main site navigation (as well as any other navigation the page or view contains).

Doing so ensures intent is carried all the way through from conception, to implementation, to use. The same notion carries through for the other HTML sectioning elements that create landmarks for assistive technology.

Labeled Controls

Brian Moore tells us about “form fields with no label or at least one that isn’t programmatically associated so it doesn’t read anything.”

It’s another frustratingly common problem.

Providing a valid for/id attribute pairing creates a programmatic association between form inputs and the label that describes what it does. And when I say label, I mean the label element. Not a clickable div, a placeholder, aria-label, or some other brittle and/or overwrought solution. label elements are a tried-and-true solution that enjoys wide and deep support for accessibility.

In addition, a label element should not be used by itself, say for a label on a diagram. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but please bear with me.

<!-- Please do this --> <label for="your-name">Your name</label> <input type="text" id="your-name" name="your-name" autocomplete="name"> <!-- Don’t do this --> <label for="eye">Cornea</label> <label for="eye">Pupil</label> <label for="eye">Lens</label> <label for="eye">Retina</label> <label for="eye">Optic Nerve</label> <img id="eye" alt="A diagram of the human eye." src="parts-of-the-eye.png" />

The same kinds of assistive technology that let a person jump to headings and landmarks also allow them to jump to input labels. Because of this, there is the expectation that when a label element is present, there is also a corresponding input it is associated with.

Alternative Descriptions

If you have low or no vision, and/or have difficulty understanding an image, HTML’s alt attribute (and not the title attribute) provides a mechanism to understand what the image is there for. The same principle applies for providing captions for video and audio content like podcasts.

Kenny Hitt mentions that when:

“…someone posts something on Twitter, if it’s just an unlabeled image, I don’t even take the time to participate in the conversation. When you start every conversation by asking what’s in the picture, it really derails things.”

Up until last week, the only way for Twitter to provide alternative descriptions for its images was to enable an option buried away in the subsection of a preference menu. Compare this to a platform like Mastodon, where the feature is enabled by default.

[embedded content]

Soren Hamby, mentions Stitcher, a popular podcast app. “The onboarding was a lot of themed graphics, but the alt text for each one was ‘unselected’ and for the same image with a check over it was selected. I think it would be reasonable for them to say ‘sci-fi genre selected’ […] it’s such a small thing but it makes all the difference.”

Ensuring that alternate description content is concise and descriptive is just as important as including the ability to add it. Daniel Göransson, a developer for Axess Lab, has a great article on how to write them effectively.

Robust, accessible features can also be part of evaluation criteria, as well as a great method for building customer loyalty. Soren mentions that they are “often the deciding factor, especially between services.” In particular, they cite Netflix’s audio descriptions.

ARIA

One topic Daniel Göransson’s article on alternative descriptions mentions is to not over-describe things. This includes information like that it is an image, who the photographer is, and keyword stuffing.

The same principle applies for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA). ARIA is a set of attributes designed to extend HTML to fill in the gaps between interactive content and assistive technology. When ARIA is used to completely replace HTML, it oftentimes leads to an over-described experience.

Brian explains: “There seems to be a perception that more ARIA fixes accessibility and it can help, but too much either reads wrong things or just talks way too much. If on screen text of one or two words is good enough for everyone else, it is good enough for screen reader users too. We don’t need whole sentence or two descriptions of buttons or links i.e ‘link privacy policy’ is far better than something like ‘this link will open our privacy policy, this link will open in a new window’ when the on screen link text is ‘privacy policy.’”

The First Rule of ARIA Use advises us to only use it when a native element won’t suffice. You don’t need to describe what your interactive component is or how it works, the same way you don’t need to include the word “image” in your alternative description.

Provided that you use the appropriate native HTML element, assistive technology will handle all of that for you. Do more, more robustly, with less effort? Sounds great to me!

(Large preview)

Unlike most of HTML, CSS, and JS, the success of implemented ARIA is contextual, variable, and largely invisible. In spite of this, we seem to be slathering ARIA onto everything without bothering to check not only if it actually works, but also what the people who actually use it think of it.

Support for ARIA is fragmented across operating systems, browsers, and assistive technology offerings, all their respective versions, and every possible permutation of all three. Simply put, writing ARIA and trusting it will work as intended isn’t enough.

If misconfigured and/or over-applied, ARIA can break. It may not report actual functionality, announce the wrong functionality, and (accurately or inaccurately) over-describe functionality. Obviously, these experiences aren’t equivalent.

Representation matters. To get a better understanding of how the ARIA code you wrote actually works, I recommend hiring people to tell you. Here are four such services that do exactly that:

Contrast

Color Contrast

Color contrast is another common issue, one whose severity often seems to be downplayed. If I could wager a guess, it’s because it’s easy to forget that other people’s vision might be different than your own. Regardless, it is a concern that affects a wide swath of the global population, and we should treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

The Click-Away Pound Survey tells us that out of the top issues faced by users with access needs, contrast and legibility weighs in as the fifth most significant issue. On top of that, it has increased as a concern, going from 44% of respondents in 2016 to 55% in 2019.

We live in an age where there’s more color contrast checking resources than I can count. Products like Stark can help designers audit their designs before it is translated into code. Tools like Eightshape’s Contrast Grid and Atul Varma’s Accessible color palette builder let you craft your design systems with robust, accessible color combinations out of the gate.

(Large preview)

The somewhat ironic thing about color contrast is how, ah, visible it is. While some of the previous accessibility issues are invisible—hidden away as the underlying code—contrast is a pretty straightforward issue.

Mostly, contrast is a binary scenario, in that you either can or cannot see content. So, the next time you check your website or webapp with an automated accessibility checker such as Deque’s axe, don’t be so quick to downplay the color contrast errors it reports.

High Contrast

There are technology solutions for situations where even satisfactory color contrast ratios isn’t sufficient—namely, inverted colors mode and High Contrast Mode. Many participants I interviewed mentioned using these display modes during their daily computer use.

Provided you use semantic HTML, both of these modes don’t need much effort on the development end of things to work well. The important bit is to check out what you’re building in these two modes to make sure everything is working as intended.

Striving For Perfection

To quote Léonie Watson,

“Accessibility doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be a little bit better than yesterday.”

By understanding both why, and how to improve your digital accessibility experiences in ways that directly address common barriers, you’re able to provide meaningful and enjoyable experiences to all.

Further Reading

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-thinking-equivalently/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/620115521826897920

[scpie]

Equivalent Experiences: Thinking Equivalently

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

Constructing an equivalent experience may mean changing the way you think about development and design, and potentially reevaluating your existing work. In this article, we’ll address common accessibility issues, and how to best go about improving them so everyone can effortlessly access your content.

This is the second of two articles on the topic of how digital accessibility is informed by equivalency. Previously, we have learned about the underlying biases that inform digital product creation, what isn’t an equivalent experience, the compounding effects of inaccessible design and code, and powerful motivating forces for doing better.

In this article, I will discuss learning how to embrace an equivalent, inclusive mindset. I will also provide practical, robust ways to improve your websites and web apps by providing solutions to common, everyday barriers cited by the people I interviewed.

Setting A Standard

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) outlines in painstaking detail how to craft accessible digital experiences. While a long and dense document, it is incredibly comprehensive — to the point where it’s been codified as an international standard. For over 10 years, we’ve had a globally agreed upon, canonical definition of what constitutes as usable.

How Would I?

If you need a little help constructing the initial mental framework the WCAG gets at, a question I always ask myself when making something is, “How would I use this if…” It’s a question that gets you to check all the biases that might be affecting you in the moment.

Examples could be:

How would I use this if…

…I can’t see the screen?

…I can’t move my arms?

…I’m sensitive to flashing and strobing animation?

…English isn’t my primary language?

…I have a limited budget for bandwidth?

…I’ve set a large default type size?

…and so on.

Focus on these four parameters to improve usability of your web design:

1. Visual – make it easy to see 2. Auditory – make it easy to hear 3. Motor – make it easy to interact with 4. Cognitive – make it easy to understand

→ Accessibility goals are also usability goals.

— Alex (@alexmuench) January 30, 2020

A Gentle Introduction

If you’re looking for a more approachable resource for how to dig into what the WCAG covers, the Inclusive Design Principles would be a great place to start. The seven principles it describes all map back to WCAG success criterion.

(Large preview)

Learn From The People Who Actually Use It

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here are some common issues cited by the people I interviewed, and how to fix them:

Wayfinding

Headings

Heading elements are incredibly important for maintaining an equivalent, accessible experience.

When constructed with skill and care, heading elements allow screen reader users to quickly determine the contents of a page or view and navigate to content relevant to their interests. This is equivalent to how someone might quickly flit around, scrolling until something that looks pertinent comes into view.

The HeadingsMap browser extension lets you view a page’s heading hierarchy. (Large preview)

Justin Yarbrough voices poorly-authored heading elements as a concern, and he’s not alone.

WebAIM’s screen reader survey cites headings as the most important way to find information. This survey is well-worth paying attention to, as it provides valuable insight into how disabled people actually use assistive technology.

Landmarks

In addition to heading elements, another way to determine the overall structure and layout are landmarks. Landmarks are roles implicitly described by HTML sectioning elements, used to help describe the overall composition of the main page or view areas.

These are five of the eight landmark HTML elements and the roles using them create. (Large preview)

Here’s what Justin has to say:

“If I’m just trying to find the main content, I’ll first try the Q JAWS shortcut key to see if a main region’s set up. If not, I’m just more or less stuck trying to scan the page to find it arrowing through the page.”

Much as how we might use a layer group name of “primary nav” in our design file, or a class name of c-nav-primary in our CSS, it’s important we also use a nav sectioning element to describe our main site navigation (as well as any other navigation the page or view contains).

Doing so ensures intent is carried all the way through from conception, to implementation, to use. The same notion carries through for the other HTML sectioning elements that create landmarks for assistive technology.

Labeled Controls

Brian Moore tells us about “form fields with no label or at least one that isn’t programmatically associated so it doesn’t read anything.”

It’s another frustratingly common problem.

Providing a valid for/id attribute pairing creates a programmatic association between form inputs and the label that describes what it does. And when I say label, I mean the label element. Not a clickable div, a placeholder, aria-label, or some other brittle and/or overwrought solution. label elements are a tried-and-true solution that enjoys wide and deep support for accessibility.

In addition, a label element should not be used by itself, say for a label on a diagram. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but please bear with me.

<!-- Please do this --> <label for="your-name">Your name</label> <input type="text" id="your-name" name="your-name" autocomplete="name"> <!-- Don’t do this --> <label for="eye">Cornea</label> <label for="eye">Pupil</label> <label for="eye">Lens</label> <label for="eye">Retina</label> <label for="eye">Optic Nerve</label> <img id="eye" alt="A diagram of the human eye." src="parts-of-the-eye.png" />

The same kinds of assistive technology that let a person jump to headings and landmarks also allow them to jump to input labels. Because of this, there is the expectation that when a label element is present, there is also a corresponding input it is associated with.

Alternative Descriptions

If you have low or no vision, and/or have difficulty understanding an image, HTML’s alt attribute (and not the title attribute) provides a mechanism to understand what the image is there for. The same principle applies for providing captions for video and audio content like podcasts.

Kenny Hitt mentions that when:

“…someone posts something on Twitter, if it’s just an unlabeled image, I don’t even take the time to participate in the conversation. When you start every conversation by asking what’s in the picture, it really derails things.”

Up until last week, the only way for Twitter to provide alternative descriptions for its images was to enable an option buried away in the subsection of a preference menu. Compare this to a platform like Mastodon, where the feature is enabled by default.

[embedded content]

Soren Hamby, mentions Stitcher, a popular podcast app. “The onboarding was a lot of themed graphics, but the alt text for each one was ‘unselected’ and for the same image with a check over it was selected. I think it would be reasonable for them to say ‘sci-fi genre selected’ […] it’s such a small thing but it makes all the difference.”

Ensuring that alternate description content is concise and descriptive is just as important as including the ability to add it. Daniel Göransson, a developer for Axess Lab, has a great article on how to write them effectively.

Robust, accessible features can also be part of evaluation criteria, as well as a great method for building customer loyalty. Soren mentions that they are “often the deciding factor, especially between services.” In particular, they cite Netflix’s audio descriptions.

ARIA

One topic Daniel Göransson’s article on alternative descriptions mentions is to not over-describe things. This includes information like that it is an image, who the photographer is, and keyword stuffing.

The same principle applies for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA). ARIA is a set of attributes designed to extend HTML to fill in the gaps between interactive content and assistive technology. When ARIA is used to completely replace HTML, it oftentimes leads to an over-described experience.

Brian explains: “There seems to be a perception that more ARIA fixes accessibility and it can help, but too much either reads wrong things or just talks way too much. If on screen text of one or two words is good enough for everyone else, it is good enough for screen reader users too. We don’t need whole sentence or two descriptions of buttons or links i.e ‘link privacy policy’ is far better than something like ‘this link will open our privacy policy, this link will open in a new window’ when the on screen link text is ‘privacy policy.’”

The First Rule of ARIA Use advises us to only use it when a native element won’t suffice. You don’t need to describe what your interactive component is or how it works, the same way you don’t need to include the word “image” in your alternative description.

Provided that you use the appropriate native HTML element, assistive technology will handle all of that for you. Do more, more robustly, with less effort? Sounds great to me!

(Large preview)

Unlike most of HTML, CSS, and JS, the success of implemented ARIA is contextual, variable, and largely invisible. In spite of this, we seem to be slathering ARIA onto everything without bothering to check not only if it actually works, but also what the people who actually use it think of it.

Support for ARIA is fragmented across operating systems, browsers, and assistive technology offerings, all their respective versions, and every possible permutation of all three. Simply put, writing ARIA and trusting it will work as intended isn’t enough.

If misconfigured and/or over-applied, ARIA can break. It may not report actual functionality, announce the wrong functionality, and (accurately or inaccurately) over-describe functionality. Obviously, these experiences aren’t equivalent.

Representation matters. To get a better understanding of how the ARIA code you wrote actually works, I recommend hiring people to tell you. Here are four such services that do exactly that:

Contrast

Color Contrast

Color contrast is another common issue, one whose severity often seems to be downplayed. If I could wager a guess, it’s because it’s easy to forget that other people’s vision might be different than your own. Regardless, it is a concern that affects a wide swath of the global population, and we should treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

The Click-Away Pound Survey tells us that out of the top issues faced by users with access needs, contrast and legibility weighs in as the fifth most significant issue. On top of that, it has increased as a concern, going from 44% of respondents in 2016 to 55% in 2019.

We live in an age where there’s more color contrast checking resources than I can count. Products like Stark can help designers audit their designs before it is translated into code. Tools like Eightshape’s Contrast Grid and Atul Varma’s Accessible color palette builder let you craft your design systems with robust, accessible color combinations out of the gate.

(Large preview)

The somewhat ironic thing about color contrast is how, ah, visible it is. While some of the previous accessibility issues are invisible—hidden away as the underlying code—contrast is a pretty straightforward issue.

Mostly, contrast is a binary scenario, in that you either can or cannot see content. So, the next time you check your website or webapp with an automated accessibility checker such as Deque’s axe, don’t be so quick to downplay the color contrast errors it reports.

High Contrast

There are technology solutions for situations where even satisfactory color contrast ratios isn’t sufficient—namely, inverted colors mode and High Contrast Mode. Many participants I interviewed mentioned using these display modes during their daily computer use.

Provided you use semantic HTML, both of these modes don’t need much effort on the development end of things to work well. The important bit is to check out what you’re building in these two modes to make sure everything is working as intended.

Striving For Perfection

To quote Léonie Watson,

“Accessibility doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be a little bit better than yesterday.”

By understanding both why, and how to improve your digital accessibility experiences in ways that directly address common barriers, you’re able to provide meaningful and enjoyable experiences to all.

Further Reading

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-thinking-equivalently/