Crawford Design

IMAGE: Mark

Web Accessibility

I first witnessed a visually impaired person trying to use a Web site in 2007. That person was my neighbor. She was trying to check her e-mail on AOL.com after the site had been redesigned. She had memorized the home page and with her limited sight she could navigate to her e-mail. After the redesign, she was lost.

We took the train to Philadelphia together and bought the JAWS screen reader and she learned how to use it. Meanwhile, I downloaded JAWS at work and started to train myself. I was amazed at how difficult it was to navigate through some Web sites using JAWS.

After witnessing the difficulty my neighbor had using a screen reader, I decided to make this Web site fully accessible for screen readers.

My goal at work is to make all of our Web sites accessible to people with disabilities. Creating accessible Web sites isn't complicated. The difficulty is making people understand that creating an accessible Web site doesn't take a tremendous amount of effort. Accessible Web sites give people with disabilities a vast amount of freedom.

Best Recipes

Digging through numerous old, battered, stained, and falling apart cookbooks to find recipes got frustrating. That frustration lead me to build this Web site which includes my favorite recipes that are easy to reference. All the recipes have been made and eaten by me as well. Any disgusting or just plain gross recipes, like the infamous grapefruit upside down cake, have been banned from this Web site.

The Burner Grates

[ Burner Grates ]This black and white photo has made me happy for years. In college I removed the burner grates from the stove in the most horrible apartment I have ever lived. I placed them on some paper in the parking lot and snapped some photos with my old 35mm camera.
I always took pride in developing beautiful photos myself.
(Right: Burner Grates, 1999)