Attention Readers
Spoiler Alert: this blog post brought to you with DEEP
#gratitude for a marriage of Adobe products and various approaches to screen
reader accessibility with special appreciation for links from a table of
contents to articles and links back to the Table of contents in the latest
electronic issue of Western Friend. These links require some extra effort for
editor Mary Klein and rantWoman deeply appreciates the effort. Those of you who
only read Quaker publications for occasional invitations into esoteric
meditations on our various content presentation / publication of Truth
technologies are invited to skip to the Technical minutia heading.
What? You looked and there is no Technical minutia heading?
I am sure there is a technical minutia heading. It is near the bottom. I am
sure of it.
But first a special announcement: This blog will be taking a
break from augmenting and documenting massive interpersonal consternation and
praying for paths through. Please welcome both a moment of #gratitude and a
technological “what the HELL?” No, you may not have the gratitude without the
technological WTF. They are a package. You have won today’s daily blindness
tourism lottery.
What? You think Quakers do not do games of Chance? You think
you forgot to buy a ticket? You feel
like you have come home with someone else’s laundry and are wondering how the
heck this lottery applies to YOU.
Does it help to think of God grabbing someone by the fingers
and emailing YOU, maybe emailing YOU along with a bunch of people you daintily
might rather not email with? On Planet RantWoman God not only is like that, God
reminds people regularly that there are many other modes of divine presence
besides “God as Personal Butler.” God frequently convinces RantWoman of the
value of shared conversation, of specific contributions possible from everyone
invited into the sacred space of electronic conversation or electronic
conversation spilling over onto phone or live conversation. And we will not
even discuss highly intrusive manifestations of the divine such as winter
storms, volcanic eruptions, floods and even honking cars and bus born
anthropology projects.
For now, consider something a bit gentler, this wonderful
quote from an article called The Strengthening Power of Discomfort by Christine
Betz Hall in the November December 2018 issue Western Friend:
A friend of mine bicycled
2,700 miles this summer along the Continental Divide. In an article she wrote for the Fairbanks
Daily News Miner (8/12/2018), she said,“When doing endurance races, I have
a question I ask myself when I want to quit: ‘Am I in danger or just uncomfortable?’
If I’m just uncomfortable, I tell myself to keep going. Things will get better. And
they usually do.”
My friend’s observation about the positive role that discomfort
can play in athletics is similar to observationsI have made in my work with
participants in the Way of the Spirit program, which I direct.
Learning to benefit from discomfort is an important aspect of spiritual
growth.
I am a
complete and enthusiastic cheerleader
for
spiritual discomfort.
I am a complete and enthusiastic cheerleader
for spiritual discomfort – especially the discomfort that comes from engaging
in non-dangerous “stretches” with others that reach across faith divisions,
from exploring our different from discomfort
is an important aspect of spiritual growth. I am a complete and enthusiastic
cheerleader for spiritual discomfort – especially the discomfort that comes
from engaging in non-dangerous “stretches” with others that reach across faith
divisions, from exploring our different experiences of the Life and Power of
the Holy.
Back to Planet RantWoman and today’s excellent high quality
blindness tourism excursion. What ? You think you did not choose to be here?
You clicked on the link. Or your came to worship. Or God plonked you in the
vicinity of RantWoman!
RantWoman understands that many of you are already in PAIN
and complaining mightily about being dragged along on this excursion. RantWoman
cannot guarantee a pain-free journey. This corner of Planet RantWoman is long
and rocky, sometimes a long cavern full of bat guano, dripping stalactites,
weird lighting, rocky treacherous paths. RantWoman does NOT intentionally
inflict pain, but RantWoman does believe in gravity, in physics, in sometimes
things happen. RantWoman thinks she has been TRYING to offer suggestions to
minimize discomfort, but it is possible Planet RantWoman needs to try something
different with the Communications director.
The RantWoman office of blindness tourism also has a
customer service division, albeit a sort of erratic and unreliable customer
service office. RantWoman is sorry but the blindness tourism customer service
is not very good at detecting pain if people do not speak up in their own
words. RantWoman had to remind herself of this recently and did speak up and
received an adequate apology. Alas RantWoman also feels she is OWED some apologies.
RantWoman thinks she is owed some apologies by people who keep discounting
RantWoman’s experience and jumping up and down on things RantWoman has already,
she thinks multiple times tried to make clear. But RantWoman digresses to the
realms of other excursions in the Blindness tourism catalog.
The Blindness Tourism Customer Service office is also really
bad at dealing with secondhand PAIN. RantWoman is so bad at dealing with
secondhand PAIN that she is about to tell anyone who brings secondhand pain on
someone else’s behalf that RantWoman needs to hear directly from the individual
in pain. RantWoman things the bringers of secondhand pain may have a valuable
role as spiritual accompaniment while pain is discussed, but RantWoman is no
longer going to interact with secondhand pain.
Technological esoterica
[Planet RantWoman has been known occasionally to joke. At
the beginning of this post, RantWoman promised a different heading, Technical
minutia. The heading delivered above is Technical Esoterica. This kind of text
shift happens all the time in the world of accessibility. Developers mean to be
consistent, but they do not always manage and it helps to plan on a little
guesswork sometimes.]
Planet RantWoman sightseeing may include collision with a
number of different technologies. RantWoman has done tech support for decades
on a number of different platforms. Tech support requires precise descriptions
of the technologies and behaviors involved. Planet RantWoman technological
excursions may get boring. But they are part of the experience customers have
bought into. Tonight’s offerings:
- RantWoman received the Western Friend issue as an attachment in Gmail. This is GREAT because in windows 10, IE 11, JAWS 2018 (are readers bored yet?) using the Gmail view as HTML option, all the articles have their own links and RantWoman was able to send her screen reader straight to the article she wanted to reread. Less time getting to the content one is interested means MORE time for tending the substance of one’s Light. Not like RantWoman would benefit from, say, time with an editor or anything like that.
- RantWoman was able to find the Western Friend email attachment on her Android Phone. RantWoman tried to read it with either Drive PDF viewer or with Acrobat. Both produced unsatisfactory results RantWoman is not going to troubleshoot.
- RantWoman also downloaded the PDF from the Western Friend website both to her phone and to her Windows machine. Something is imperfect on both platforms, but RantWoman needs to stop for now.
The short version, despite #a11y (electronic accessibility)
imperfections on several paths and having to go through many steps other people
never think about, RantWoman has been able to read the whole issue of Western
Friend and then navigate around enough to go back to one article without
rereading the whole issue. RantWoman is VERY grateful.
Now Readers, please read the rest of the article about
discomfort. Read the other articles too if led. Andp please consider this
exhortation an invitation to live conversation.
In Light and faithfulness.
RantWoman
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