An album for a11y
TL;DR I'm putting together an album to raise money for an organization that supports web accessibility.
I had this brainwave while nursing a hangover in Brighton after Responsive Day Out: There are a load of folks working in the overlapping fields of web standards and accessibility who are musicians. Some really quite accomplished. So, why not ask around and have some tracks donated to a "charity" album which generates funds to support web accessibility. Simple(s).
Tracks flying in
The response has been promising, so it's likely to go ahead. The tracks submitted so far (in no particular order yet) are:
- Luck — @gorkamolero
- Imprecise and Infrared — @brucel
- The WCAG 2.0 Theme Song — @davidmacd
- The Git Rap — @marak
- Eatin' Dust (Fu Manchu cover) — me
- Tour De Force — @brothercake
- Swallows — @thatemil
- Man With Small F (The Inaccessible PDF song) — @terrillthompson
- Girl In The Room — @brucel
Are you a musician? Do you work in/on/under the Web? Do you have a piece of music laying around? Please contact me using heydon@heydonworks.com or via Twitter.
You'll notice there's two submissions by Bruce Lawson. This means I can legitimately use the expression "Brucey bonus", so that's nice. I think it's a good balance between web development-themed novelty tracks and just good tunes. In addition, I'm trying to pen a track about <div>s called "Divs".
Artwork
Artwork-wise, I have done a bit of creative lettering. I've taken the #a11y hashtag and supplanted the 11 for two fingers forming the Ronnie James Dio-originated "devil horns" hand gesture. Here's how it's looking:
The beneficiary
There has been some discussion about the beneficiary of the proceeds. Ideally, I want it to support an international web accessibility org', but I've had trouble finding one of them. So the shortlist is NVaccess (creators of the NVDA screen reader), The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and The British Computer Association Of The Blind. Let me know which you prefer in the comments and I'll take it on board.
E-commerce
I'm currently considering selz.com for actually selling the record. I was impressed with the inclusion of focus styles and a "skip to content" link on their homepage. Gumroad was lacking in these areas. Other suggestions welcome.
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