Terrill Thompson: Recent Episodes
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For the second year, I’m hosting NCAA basketball tournament brackets on Yahoo! Sports. After over a decade of hosting my own accessible tournament bracket site at terrillthompson.com/ncaa, I made the decision last year to switch to a mainstream site, as explained in my previous blog post. I’ll update this blog post soon with a report […]
Legendary college basketball coaches Roy Williams (North Carolina), Mike Krzyzewski (Duke), Jay Wright (Villanova), and Jim Boeheim (Syracuse) have all recently retired. It’s a new era. If these legends of the game can step away, I feel justified in doing the same. Since 2006, I’ve hosted an annual Accessible NCAA Tournament Bracket. I created the site […]
Sifting through the many shoeboxes on closet floors in my childhood home in Indiana, I found a few gems, including a black and white class photo. On the back is handwritten “Westwood School 8th Grade Graduation Class 1940”. My dad and mom, Francis and Ruth, are seated in the front row. He’s fourth from the […]
I’m back! This website was hacked, and I’ve been super busy with work and life; too busy to clean up the hackers’ mess and tighten security. During this down time, the site has alternated between an unstyled and unhelpful WordPress error (“There has been a critical error on your website”)… … and a very simple […]
With only a few days remaining until Election Day in the United States, things are likely to get really loud, as if they weren’t already loud enough. If you’re like me, occasionally you need to turn down the volume and embrace the silence. I’m hesitant to talk or write about silence since these very words […]
The 2020-21 NFL season kicked off this week. I write this having just watched the Seattle Seahawks beat the Atlanta Falcons in an empty stadium. The TV broadcast included fake crowd noises that were somewhat effective for manufacturing a sense of excitement, but a little off in their cadence and authenticity. The kickoff event of […]
The idea for Peakware was spawned in 1994 on the summit of Mount Elbert, the highest mountain in Colorado and the second highest in the lower 48 states. This was was my first fourteener (mountains higher than 14,000 feet), and I was hooked. I loved the physical challenge of hiking more than 10 miles and […]
In 2020, COVID-19 upended society in countless ways, including the cancelling of the annual NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. This meant cancelling my annual Accessible Tournament Bracket and pool, which is something I always look forward to. Fast forward to May. I’m giving a presentation at the HighEdWeb Accessibility Summit on Accessible Navigation Menus, based in […]
In the comments on my previous blog post, Adrian Roselli called me out for my claim that the “menu” design pattern in the W3C’s WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices is the right way to code a navigation menu. This is an issue that has plagued me for at least a decade, maybe more. My first blog post […]
While watching the Kansas City Chiefs win Super Bowl LIV last night, one of the most effective commercials for me was the one from Squarespace, featuring Winona Ryder sitting roadside in the snow with her laptop. A local law enforcement officer shows up and they have an exchange that’s reminiscent of Fargo. The commercial isn’t […]
Ok, there are actually two Terrill Thompsons, but that’s another story. This particular Terrill (me) has a short bio that reads “Terrill Thompson is technology accessibility specialist with the University of Washington, web developer, musician, writer, outdoor adventurer, and seeker of truth.” These are a lot of things that I Am. Historically I’ve kept some […]
I work in a variety of places. I share an office with Doug at the Seattle campus of the University of Washington. I share an office with David, Carly, Stephanie, and Nigel at Western Washington University in Bellingham, with Max a short shout away. I share an office with anyone else who happens to be […]
This is another one of those end-of-year blog posts. As I reflect back on 2018 though, it certainly has been an extraordinary year. I wrote this a few days ago and have been hesitant to post it. If anyone who reads this is interested in traveling to Nepal, I don’t want to discourage that. Nepal […]