E51 – Interview with Eric Meyer – Part 1

Eric talks about accessibility, of course, and semantics, and frameworks, and more! The web prioritises ubiquity over consistency and a lot of these-- there have been a lot of attempts to prioritise consistency over ubiquity. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Make sure you have a look at: Their blog: https://www.twilio.com/blog Their channel on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/twilio Diversity event tickets: https://go.twilio.com/margaret/ Transcript Nic:  Welcome to the A11y Rules Podcast. This is episode 51. I’m Nic Steenhout and I talk with people involved in one way or another, with web accessibility. If you are interested in accessibility, hey, this show’s for you. To get today’s show notes or transcript, head out to https://a11yrules.com. Thanks to Twilio for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Twilio, connect the world with the leading platform for voice, SMS and video at Twilio.com. Hello everyone, so this week I am speaking with Eric Meyer. Eric, thanks for joining me for this conversation around web accessibility. Eric:  Thanks for having me. Nic:  I like to let guests introduce themselves. So, in a brief introduction, who is Eric Meyer? Eric:  I’m a-- I mean, this is a difficult question to answer sometimes. When I meet people out in the world and they say “What do you do?”, I always struggle for an answer, but, I guess the best answer is that I’m a technical Author and explainer. I’ve written a number of books about CSS, co-founded web design and development, sort of, education conference with Jeffrey Zeldman. When I say education conference, I mean that we-- our goal is to have people come away from every talk with something that they’ve learned and something they can put to use-- Nic:  Right Eric:  --Doesn’t necessarily mean exactly higher ed, although we have higher ed people come. I have a family, live in Cleveland, Ohio. I really like it here, even when it is hot and humid. And, I don’t know, I guess I’m someone who has been working on the web for a really long time, still finds it fascinating, compelling, something worth advancing. Even with all the downsides And someone who hopes I can continue contributing to that conversation. Nic:  Well you certainly have contributed your fair share over the years and I want to thank you for that, and I’m sure that pretty much all my listeners will be very thankful for all your work. Eric:  Well, I mean, I hope it was useful. That was really always the goal was to either-- well it was to be useful in one way or the other. Either to help people understand something they didn’t understand before or give them a thing that is useful to them. And, you know, I’ve had my stumbles along the way, we might talk about that later, but, yeah. Yeah. Nic:  To get warmed up a little bit, tell us something that most people would not know about you. Eric:  Well, Something that most people would not know about me? My first job was working at a McDonalds in, just outside of Mansfield, Ohio. Which is where I grew-- I grew up in that area. I grew up actually in and just south of Lexington, Ohio which is south of Mansfield, Ohio. Most people will not have heard of any of those but I-- when I was hired, for my first seven months, I worked the fry station because it was a busy enough, and demanding enough McDonalds that you started out on the fry station and then if you proved that you were capable of working and learning you might get promoted to the grill. And then if you were really good, you might get promoted to cashier. And if you were really, really good you might get promoted to working the drive-through. I never made the drive-through, I did-- by the time I was done with my two and a half years of work there, I did manage to land some time on the cash register. But-- Nic:  We do have something in common, that we have both worked in food service before. And although I didn’t actuall