Jan 2022 Update: 2021 was a lot

So, I haven’t posted anything in about a year. It’s not uncommon given the state of the world, but I wanted to give a little update anyway. I am working on one last article in the accessibility in academic research series.

This past year was pretty hard, as it was for just about everyone. During the past year, I was frantically trying to find a new job because my now-husband (another thing that changed this past year) got a professor job in another region of the country. My old job wouldn’t let me live outside of Boston city limits. Anyway, I found a new job, got married, moved to another region of the country, and started a new job. Additionally, I became a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP). I joined the board of a library user experience journal. You may also notice I changed my last name too. All of this is to say that a lot happened in the past year and that’s why I never finished the series.

However, it’s on my list of things to get to. In my new position, I’ve been learning a lot. I’ve been learning more about document accessibility and using screen readers for testing. I also know that I will be learning a lot about user experience research and discovery systems so you can likely expect more posts about those topics in the future.

Hope to share more content soon!

Update: January 2020

So it’s been quite a while since I last posted, and all I can say about that is that 2019 was an unexpectedly busy year. I presented at a conference, BiblioCon 2019, and I’ve uploaded that presentation to this site. This presentation is called ” Low-Cost Usability Testing.” The presentation basically covers how you can improvise usability testing for your website without spending any additional money, and still get meaningful results.

You can check it out, and other presentations I’ve worked on here.

I also blog for my job, but on very different topics. To be honest, a lot of my energy is going into that nowadays. If you’re ever curious about what those posts look like, you can see them all here

That’s it for now, but I’m hoping to write up more about the presentation, and some research I’m working on this year.

What I’m Working On/Reading: July 2019

It’s been a while since I posted, but this is the first time I’ve had some free time to sit down and think about things I want to say or share.

When I did usability testing for the redesign of the Boston Public Library website last year, we found that seniors had the most difficulty using the new website. At the time, we didn’t have time to explore much into it. We made the edits we needed based on their feedback, but I wanted to revisit this. Seniors tend to be the demographic group with the most difficulty with technology, and changes. However, they’re also a significant part of the population. I want to make sure as we look forward, we aren’t leaving them behind. Now, we finally have the time to work on this project, so here are a few things I’m reading as I think about how I want to approach this.

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What I’ve been working on: A new bpl.org

Homepage for the soon-to-be new bpl.orgSo today, I can finally show you what I’ve been working on at my new job, that I started a little less than six months ago.

The Boston Public Library unveiled today its new website, now available for public preview.

The website can be viewed here: https://bpl.bibliocms.com/, and we’re really excited about a few features:

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