All right, welcome everybody to the August 18th Hyperledger technical steering committee call. We do have a number of people joining today who have not previously joined us. So I'm going to make sure we cover the antitrust policy notice. A bit more details. So just FYI this meeting is covered by the next foundation's antitrust policy notice here. If you have any sort of questions or concerns, please contact Hyperledger staff, your legal console, or even Andrew up to grow of the firm, Gessner up to grow within questions that you might have. The second thing that we have to abide by on this call is the code of conduct, which is linked in our agenda. Everybody is welcome to participate here, but make sure that you are respectful to the other people who are on the call. I'll go through the announcements. The first announcement here is a standard announcement. There is a dev weekly developer newsletter that goes out each Friday to hundreds of hyperledger developers. If you have something that you would like to reach those developers, please leave a link in the comment or leave a comment in the link that is linked in our agenda here. So there's a wiki page that you can provide your comments. The second announcement I have is that I would like to cancel the September 15 hyperledger type of a steering committee call, because I personally will be on a plane back from the hyperledger global forum. And I'm imagining that there will be a number of other people in some sort of travel state as well. So, I just wanted to make that announcement before we actually cancel it from the calendar. Does anybody have any objections to doing so. Thanks, Dana. All right, and then the last thing here. I don't know Emily, you want to cover this. Absolutely. Good morning all I'm Emily I'm from the PR team and I just put a note in here I think rise put this out on discord as well but as global forum is just around the corner we are looking to highlight project news. I know of a couple things that I think are out there but it would be great to have as much. And it doesn't have to be breaking news would be great if it was breaking news but anything recent and noteworthy in terms of project releases standards labs new projects, anything along those lines that you want highlighted I just need to know about it by Monday, 29th, so we can plan it into the new cycle and as appropriate plan some blog content as well just support it. So quick call for that if you have something. Please email the PR at hyperledger.org email address. That would be great. I'm also on discord some but the PR at truthfully the PR address is a more reliable way to reach me. Thank you, Emily. Any other announcements that anybody would like to make at this time. So with that, I did leave the areas in the indie reports on the agenda. They were came in. I don't know a couple weeks ago maybe, but there were still a number of people who hadn't reviewed them. I didn't see any comments coming through on those. So I will end up removing them from the agenda for next week but is there any questions or comments that has on either the areas or the indie report that we should cover. Okay, so no hands, nobody coming off mute. I'll take that as you know. We also have the Roja report, which came, it was supposed to be due last Thursday. So we will reach out to the Roja team and see if we can get them to submit their quarterly report. I think we actually have a number of people on the call today so we have completed the report. It is a different final proof review proof read will be submitted to me tomorrow at the latest. All right. Okay, so that's the announcements and the quarterly reports. We do have the double report I see has been being worked on. We kind of get at it and removed from that. So I expect that to be coming in here shortly. The grid and the transact reports are due next week. So we will look to see those as well. So with that, I think we are on to the meat of the agenda. I don't know who's sharing, but if you want my scrolling down. All right. So we have two items of discussion today. The first one is the soloing project proposal that has been provided. The second one is been added here by Rai on behalf of the Roja team to talk about the Ursa library and the way in which we get that updated. So I think I'm going to actually start with the second item. I was told it won't take a whole lot of time to cover this, but I think it is probably the place where we should start and then we will jump to the soloing project proposal and have a discussion on that. So, I don't know, Alexander, are you going to be talking about this or do we have somebody else who's going to be talking about this. It's fine. I'll cover this. So, just as a brief reminder, Hyperlegia Ursa is the unified cryptographed library, written in Rust, but it also provides a C ABI compatible library version. And it is currently in a state which is causing problems for her. The first problem that we have encountered was that we had to hold back a few major cryptographic dependencies due to Hyperlegia Ursa using older, unupdated versions of those libraries. We dug a little deeper. We identified a couple of CVEs, we have contacts with the Ursa developers and are waiting for a response for the past three months. Unfortunately, nothing happened. We contacted Rai, who generously offered us help. The way we would like it to be resolved is of course for Ursa maintainers to return and to help us with updating their library. Unfortunately, this is not possible, so an alternative was proposed, making a few of us, a few of the maintainers of Ursa, co-maintain Hyperlegia Ursa. Unfortunately for that, we would need a little bit more resources. Right now we're stretched a little thin. We already have an ad capacity team of 12 people. We can't spare more developer time, and we can't spare more than a few people's part-time attention to maintaining Ursa. However, be able to change or revise this, provided that we had a little bit more resources, so that we could hire at least someone to replace the lost time in Ursa, or ideally someone with security proficiencies so that they could also co-review our contributions to Ursa. So depending if, of course, the second option is inevitable to make some small alterations, so that Ursa is easier to maintain in the future. In particular, we're moving away from a few deprecated libraries and relying more on Rust core rather than external dependencies, just like we do. We also offer our experience with testing, buzzing, and code quality, so that we can help Ursa remain both reliable and easy to use. And I guess that's it from my side. Jim. Yeah. Hey, Alex. Alexandra. Yes. Yeah, first question from me is besides Iroha, do you know other either Hyperledger projects or customer projects that are dependent on Ursa? I'm guessing that Rai Jones would be more qualified to answer this question. I am unfortunately focused on Iroha development. I'm just curious if finding the other dependent projects and work out the resource issue might be a worthwhile effort at this point. I can imagine Iroha being the only project using Ursa. I don't know off the top of my head and unfortunately, heart is not on this call. I have to defer. I know that I think Grid was looking at it for a while. I don't know though. Okay, I guess the other question. I'll then Jim, I think it might have an answer to some of it. Yeah. And lastly, the areas projects are making use of Ursa. Indie uses it to a certain extent. We know that a row has been using it, but I don't know of any other projects that are using in production with there are have been some projects to do verifiable credentials from fabric and some of the other blockchains that Hyperledger that have, have made use of Ursa but I don't think any of them were released into a production environment. There's some of the security stuff as well if we want to dive down that track but I think the focus here is on what Iroha wants to do next so far. Okay, yeah it seems like if Indie slash Aries are using Ursa to the same extent that Iroha is, the same problem would be present there as well so maybe the teams can work together. The next related question I had is for the Iroha team, if it's not Ursa, do you have an alternative? From open source point of view, if you need something changed in the dependency and no one is doing that, usually it's the, it's dependent team that has to, to contribute resources, that's certainly been our experience. There's just no way, no other way to make it work, right? Well, certainly, yes. However, we are far from the only users as far as I can tell. It does not make sense for us to unilaterally contribute to significant architectural changes in Ursa. Unfortunately, one of the deprecated libraries is failure. And that library is an error handling library that requires a significant restructuring of the code. It is a semantically incompatible, a sember incompatible version of Ursa. And we don't want to do that unilaterally, we want to at least know if there are other people involved, know if there are other people interested in maintaining it. And if so, I'd like to be aware of their requirements and the necessities. Right. Yeah, I was going to ask, like, is there a way that we can, or maybe through the TSC or Hyperledger Foundation, like there's a way to put out like some kind of like call for, I don't know, call for participation in the Ursa project, like we could help to coordinate, you know, this maintenance if there were a few interested developers from other Hyperledger members, for instance. I think that's an interesting suggestion, Makoto. Nathan. I think one of the first steps here is to show up on the Ursa call. There has been a resurgence of interest from DSR and the vast folks and a few others in doing some of this maintenance work. But apparently, we haven't heard from the Roja folks on that call. I'm reaching out to Cam over chat right now and talking to him about what he's heard about this issue and what he hasn't heard about this issue. It looks like we have some disconnect between the things that are going on this on the security list and the maintainers and Ursa. So not everybody in the Ursa project is aware of the issues that Roja is facing. So that would probably be the first step is to try to make sure everybody on the project knows what's going on. And it could just be there's a communication gap. I know Cam in particular and the folks at Kiva we have been less connected to this than we were in the past. As Kiva pulled back some of its project work on Hyperledger areas. So, I guess I think it's just kind of a transition gap that we're seeing on Ursa and less an indicator of overall project help. But the fact that we went from the third to the 12th with for a response and that I'm asking core maintainers on Ursa and they still haven't heard about the issue is indicative of some communications problems. And I think that's probably a good step to take as far as next steps. It also brings to mind some of the work that's being done by the security task force for making sure that we have the right security contacts in the list to ensure that you know people who need to be aware of security issues coming in are aware of those issues. So that's that's probably something else we can follow up on as a next step as well as to make sure that we have communication with the Ursa maintainers and make sure that we know who the right security contacts are from that that group of people to ensure that when they're aware of these issues when they come up and can start to address them or at least have conversations in this regard so yeah I think two next steps that I heard coming out of this discussion one is for the Roja team to join the Ursa community and have discussions with them and then secondly for us to make sure that we have the right contacts and the security list to ensure that Ursa is represented as they need to be any other discussion that we should have on this particular topic. I think we can. All right. Well thank you for bringing this to our attention and hopefully this through having conversations directly with the Ursa maintainers and their community calls will help to at least get some movement on the challenges here that you have. So then the next topic here on our agenda is the selling project proposal. We do have Sean here to talk to us about this proposal I have seen a few comments here in the GitHub for requests but Sean did you want to talk us through kind of the proposal and let us know kind of where so long that at the moment. Hello. Okay, so I suppose I'm aware the comments on the pull requests being addressed. So I can give like a brief role background on so long. So originally I was working on borough and we were using the fear of the compiler to use things to passivity. I wanted to do things that compiler couldn't do. We open some issues on the on the saucy compiler, get up repo at some discussions and they showed really no interest. So I suppose that in the wider blockchain, and there will be interest in a compiler which would support stability for for other targets and even other targets and Ethereum. And so. We're building quite a few scratch. Yeah, they must use LLVM so the tricky parts for code generation would be, we do not deal with that that could be done by by LLVM. We only need to work on the front end of the compiler. So we just the parsing semantic analysis and the LLVM intermediate representation generation. So we, we support nearly all the same syntax as, as Ethereum facility. So 0.8. There are a few minor exceptions, and no one's raised any issues about that yet, and we will resolve those minor issues as well. So, while the project was growing, I have spoken to various high pleasure. So I spoke to make a moment about adding sport for city for the private data objects project. We started some initial code. Didn't really, unfortunately, couldn't really develop from there, but definitely a lot of interest. We had brief discussions with Michael about, about supporting fabric by the fabric contracts API. That seemed like a good idea. But no work was started for that but also a definite interest. We wrote a prototype for sawtooth, and lots of discussions and calls with Sean Almondson about how to further progress that. I don't know of putting bodies on the project but definitely interested in that project as well. So, so long is, isn't just a generic compiler project. It also provides building blocks for tooling. So, there's a city code format and which is being written based on so long sparser. We've written a using the high pleasure mentorship two years back a language server for stability. So this is something you can use in these code, for example, so it gives you syntax highlighting and errors and hovers and that sort of thing. It can also be used in atom and in the UVM. And the other interesting thing is that existing static analysis tools often work in LLVM IR and saucy doesn't produce LLVM IR so those tools won't work with that. So, I've been talking to Jeff one a professor from from Texas A&A University about using doing some analysis on to using so that you can see that's the green core project. So that's an interesting angle. I guess last year, what I'd like to say is that compiling smart contracts is kind of different than a traditional compiler. So, which makes this project interesting, I feel. So normally with a compiler you would balance the execution time to compiler with how optimized your compiler output is. So the contracts did the balances is different. The contract is quite small. So you're dealing with just a small amount of code. And the need for optimization is much higher on change like Ethereum, the gas cost is such that if you can optimize the output more. There are genuine cost savings, especially over many runs that can be very significant. So there are compiler techniques like super optimization, compiler execution, which is concrete and simple execution. The methods that some methods can be used to optimize smart contracts. It's very interesting field. So Solang, for example, has a pass which replaces 256-bit multiplies with 64-bit multiplies. And it uses code-cloning execution in order to implement that. And that's something you wouldn't do in a traditional compiler because if you would do that on a large program, the execution time to compiler would just be far too great. So we, yeah, so we're, there's not a subset communities are very interested. The targets are very much maturing and there's this different activity around that. And lastly, we would like to work on EVM back end. So we've only just had discussions about changing the EVM target to EVM, which would be another very interesting thing to work on. I guess that's it. Thanks, Sean. So as everybody probably remembers or might remember, this is the second time that Solang has come to the TSE to propose this project into incubation. The last time we chatted, I think that the main concern was really around the main tenorship, I think it was Sean at that point. And since then, there have been a couple of new additions to the main tenorship of the project. And so I guess at this point, open for any sort of questions that people might have for Sean on Solang or any sort of discussion items that we should talk through. So we've had a couple of conversations prior to this and our TSE calls last week in the project gap. So anything else that we should bring up at this point. I should mention that. Yeah, go ahead, Sean. I just wanted to mention that the other maintainers, Lucas and Sarah, they're also on the call available for questions. Thanks, Sean, for the presentation. So sorry, a quick question. Maybe it's a, it's a question that's bugging me for a while now. So which products are like competing that let's say Solang, for instance. So can you share some information, some thoughts on. So for the study language, there's, there's the Ethereum strategy compiler, so see, and that only targets, if you're in, so that that's a competitive for that. There's also a political soul, but that that is a study compiler, but it, it doesn't develop to cease. It can and can only target he was and be well wasn't probably isn't developing either. So, as far as compilers, the only competitors we have is the Ethereum compiler, but that only targets Ethereum. Is that that that's not your question. Sorry, yeah I have, I think my question extends to that right so the reason I was asking for that is. So when we say, so that people don't need to familiarize themselves with other programming languages, like if they are solidity developers, that this particular project can cross compile it for them across other blockchains, other non-Etherian blockchains. So, are we talking about Ethereum compatible blockchains itself for non-Etherian, since specifically I mentioned it as non-Etherian compatible, just for a time, let's say, namesake, because fabric is the other most popular one, apart from basic. Let's say people come here and they say, okay, there is a Solang project, can I write my solidity and can compile it into a chain code, for instance, that's kind of question that people can come up with right. So, just to have that understanding so what exactly is happening inside Solang or is there any competitive projects that does something like what here it's happening. So Solang can compile, so there's a generic part in Solang which compiles solidity, but there's a target specific part. So at the moment we can target Solana substrate and E-wasm, and we certainly have a lot, we have a lot of interest in developing this for fabric as well. At the moment it's not possible yet, so when the solidity state is accessed, for example, you have to hook up the blockchain specific parts, but the aim is very much for Solang to target many different blockchains. Understood, so the way we should understand currently the Solang is, it is compiling, I mean sure it is cross compiling or solidity into multiple, like the outcome binaries. However, all those binaries are currently compatible with the ones that support, let's say, E-wasm itself, right, so. No, no, no, this is not true, no. Solang to Solana polka dots and E-wasm are not EVM, but those are not EVM virtual machines, these are completely different virtual machines. E-wasm polka dots is a WebAssembly kind of virtual machine, non-EVM, E-wasm is also WebAssembly, and Solana uses a different virtual machine based on the Linux kernel BPF. So it's, this project makes sure you're available to non-EVM chains. Sorry, I should have a question that has some blockchain that supports Ethereum smart contracts, not necessarily via EVM. Okay, yes, okay, yes. So this project is so that the blockchain itself doesn't make any change to, there's no change made to the blockchain itself, and the compiler just has a target which implements all the blockchain specific parts for that, for each blockchain. Yeah, two questions. The first one was kind of answered already, so just want to confirm my understanding. I thought Solang was mainly targeting WebAssembly based runtime engines, but based on what Sean just said, that's not the case. Substrate and E-wasm is WebAssembly based, but Solana is not. Is that understanding correct? Yes, that's correct. And this is the great thing about using LLVM. Right, okay. Yeah, that's clear. My second question is, can you talk a little bit about the level of effort now and expect it in the future to add a new execution engine support, say, how much of the code has to be written to support. I don't know if Fabric is a good example. I don't know, let's say to support Cosmos, for example. It kind of, it's a bit pointless to say, learn Solidity and then compile to a full language that Fabric supports. I think that would just go to the full language directly. So I wouldn't use Fabric as a good example for future expansions, but maybe Cosmos, what would be the level of effort to add that support? Well, I'm glad you asked about Cosmos because Cosmos is something that looks at the past and to evaluate how much work it would be. So Cosmos, it's a WebAssembly based virtual machine, so generating WebAssembly is not a problem. The problem of the effort will be required in hooking up all the blockchain specific parts. So in Solidity, you can do things like ask the current block height or save something on chain or retrieve something from chain or get the time, lots of sorts of things. So all those specific, blockchain specific things need to be hooked up, and in Cosmos, that's done over Protobuf. So the effort that's required would be to, for all those things is to translate a request or compile a request in Solidity into a Protobuf request, and it goes to a WebAssembly host function at runtime and then the answer is sent back and then we have to deprotobuf the result. So for each one of those functions, we need to create a Protobuf request and pass the result, and then the next part is, well, lots of testing, writing integration tests for the chain. So, I guess another thing is when you call a Solidity contract, you call a function and function arguments. That's also done via Protobuf on Cosmos. So the function arguments and return values will have to be deserialized and serialized using Protobuf. That's essentially the work required to get Solidity working. There are a few functions in Cosmos which are very useful to have access to in Solidity. So it might be needed to add a few functions, built-in functions in Solang for Cosmos. We've done this for Solana, I've done this for Substrate, you can do an import from quote-quote, single quotes, Solana in Solidity, and you can import specific built-in Solana functions and call them. Does that answer your question? Yeah, that helps a lot. I'm trying to figure out if someone were to add support to a new smart contra-engine with that person, what's the most important skill? Would it be understanding compiler architectures? Or I just need to know how the internals of that new runtime works. I don't have to know how to build compilers. I'm just trying to figure out how likely is it, is Solana in the future going to expand to support other blockchains? The effort is very much around understanding the target VM and interface and not so much the compiler architecture. It does get quite tricky because when things don't work, you are working on quite a low level in WebAssembly also, and you might end up having to sort of step through some WebAssembly codes to understand why it doesn't work. That's very much sort of runtime VM kind of issues. The compiler side for a new target probably isn't a huge issue, and that's certainly something we can probably be able to help with should arise. Okay, that helps out. Thanks, Sean. So I just want to point out that they really did a good job fixing the two big issues that were around the last time they came up. They got the three maintainers, and they're also a large number of very viable real-world use cases along with the interest we're seeing here. So I think now is absolutely the right time to bring this in. And this doesn't impact the admission, but I think something that we're useful to see is how they handle standard solidity contracts being fed straight in like all the open Zeppelin. It would be an interesting test case to figure out where the rough spots are and might also open up a utility for people who'd want to say just run the open Zeppelin fabric, open Zeppelin tokens on fabric or some other chain, but that has no bearing on whether or not on my acceptance of this. So that's just point of information. You're absolutely right. Putting over Zeppelin is an off requested feature. So, Cyril has just opened an issue for that, and it's something which is on our roadmap. Any other comments? Any concerns that people might have with bringing Zeppelin in as a top level project? Or any other support that anybody wants to state at this point? Sorry, I definitely want to go through technical details. I'm interested more after understanding these much details, right? One more question now that Sean is on the call, just from a community support point of view. And some of the other blockchains that are listed over here are they have their own ecosystem in terms of maintainers and developers, the community, right? So how is the reception from them on this project? Is this being communicated to them as well? Absolutely. So, Lucas and I both work for Solana, and we're very, we get a lot of interest from the community. Basically for two reasons, people want to take the existing contracts, existing facility contracts on Solana, or they don't really want to learn Rust. Some people just feel that on something Rust is too much of an ask and would rather just keep to Solana. So there's a lot of interest in that community. And in substrate as well. We are, we are on various discord servers and telegram groups. Yeah, sure. I can add to it that there are, there is interest on using Solana for targeting the substrate runtime. We are aware of power chain teams that want to use it in production. And they actually plan to do that. I just wanted to compliment what Sean was saying. On the Solana side, the company promotes some events to, to devote what the network is doing and to make people build on Solana. And we've been part of some of those events trying to encourage people to use Solidity to build the projects and we've seen some interest. And as Sean mentioned, people are trying to use the existing contracts on Solana and we are making efforts to help these people build on Solana using Solidity. Any other discussion items from the TC or anyone else on the call. I have a question about the AI stability plans for the survey. If it's going to be interoperable with WebAssembly in some way. I'm sorry, I missed that. The AI stability. Sorry, in the walkway. The next point of backwards compatibility is the SO lang compiler, so to speak, going to be backwards compatible with all the smart contracts on the binary. On the binary level in the sense that all the smart contracts come out of the exact same binary representation, or effectively the same representation. The output is, I mean, we've made conscious effort to make sure that the output is deterministic. We suddenly had box fixes for that. The, we're not on the on the binary level we have to have to be compatible with what the language says that doesn't sort of change. The new version of Solidity don't retains functionality to just add functionality. They wouldn't change the execution function. Okay, thank you. So the way that the Ethereum Solidity compiler deals with this binary reproducibility problem is a lot of the contracts will lock into a specific version of Solidity. So as long as it's deterministic compiler and it always produces the same result for each version, I would expect that it would have the same security story of Solidity if you lock into a specific version of Soling. And you compile down to that specific, you know, always use that specific version of compiler you always get the same results. And that's that's about as the highest qualities you can get for people build within the EVM ecosystem so if they can do the same for wasm targets, they'll, they'll be in the same position that Ethereum is which I think is fairly fairly reasonable for for the constraints. Any other questions. I'm not hearing any. Anybody speak up against this is. So I, it's not, it's not a question it's more, more about comment. I see that Solang is mostly focusing on Ethereum based blockchain or AVS. And we have very few, like, you know, we have Bezo which is a client, but most of the blockchain projects, I'm just, I'm just trying to understand and see how it fits into the current portfolio of the projects that we have in Hyperledger and without without a roadmap or a kind of vision of how it's integrated into the major projects like fabric or soft tooth. It's very helpful to judge and see how we can help to build community around this project being, you know, being incubated into the Hyperledger. We certainly have had, have had discussions in the past about using Solang for, for, for other projects. So we've had this conversation with fabric and with sort of private data objects. So at the moment, there's no plans were definitely made. Work wasn't what she started. And but that certainly doesn't stop it from, from us doing that in the future. So we're very interested in adding more targets to do so like the, the more projects work with with so like that, the, the more successful the project is, help. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Right. Any other discussion? Should we move to vote. Yes, that's a, yes, everybody, if there's no other conversation I think that's where we're at today. I put a motion to accept Solang as incubation project in Hyperledger as described in the PR. Oh, second. Thanks to him. Did you want to take us to a vote. Of course, I will choose by the order will be who has the longest name in the list. Troy, in the matter before the TSC how do you vote. He's used to being last. Okay, we'll come back to Troy. Artem. I will abstain. Arun. We do this next week because I definitely want to read more and come back, or can I give my opening later through email. Is it okay. Jersey. Well, I mean, we've had the motion in the second I think we're at the point where we're ready to vote. I need some more time. I'll probably abstain, but I'll change my own. I may change my own after reading more. It's allowed. Okay, two abstains. Daniel. Yes. David. Yes. Grace. Yes. Jim. Yes. Kamlesh. Yes. Nathan. Yes. Tracy. Yes. Troy. Well, the motion passes anyway. But congratulations. All right. Thanks Sean. Congratulations on becoming the newest project within Hyperledger. Now the hard part. What's your new name going to be. Yeah. So, I'm just trying to forget who's on call. Daniela, do we. Do you want to take this or David, do we want to take this to the marketing committee? I know in the proposal, it's a hyper ledger selling unless somebody at the hyper ledger decided that that was not the way that we want to go. So. Sure. There's a naming process that we now jump into. So we will start that process up and reach out to. Sean and the rest of the maintainers. So, and congratulations to the maintainers. We're looking forward to working with you to get so long as a, as a project announced over the next few weeks as well. So we will take it from here. Tracy. We actually have a call with the marketing committee chairs next. So we'll put it on there and reach out. Thank you everyone. All right. Thanks Daniela. Any other discussion items that we should have. That weren't on our agenda. That we should close out with today. So with that, I guess we'll close the call for this week. And we will talk again next week. Thank you. And congratulations to the selling team. For being debated within hyper ledger. Congratulations. Yep. Bye bye.


Case dismissed. When could we let Billy appear in public again? Could we ever, without fear, what kind of a life will we try to buy for him? For us, a frantic woman torn by the conflicting emotions of love and fear. Where can she turn for the truth? Is there a chance she cannot have her... Case dismissed. WMAQ in cooperation with the Chicago Bar Association presents Case dismissed. This is the story of your legal rights. How vital to preserve and protect them. How easily they might be lost. Today our story begins in a Chicago concert hall, as proud parents hear the finale of a remarkable performance. Quite a sound we have there, Mary Ann. It wasn't really a wonderful day. Honestly, Phil, I've never heard in place of you, Will. Here he comes out to respond.  All right, dear. Come on, this way. I know a shortcut. Sounds like school days. I'd rather to mention that I do feel like a schoolgirl. And you look like one too, dear. Well, thank you very much. Oh, I feel wonderful.  No regrets, then? About letting Billy play his violin in public? Oh, no, dear. Not any more. Good. I've been hoping you'd say that one of these days. You've been awfully understanding, Phil. I guess I was pretty silly trying to keep Billy's marvelous talent a secret. A pre-blood indeed seen by the public. Nonsense, honey. I was just as apprehensive myself. I don't know. I guess it's because we've always heard about heart-breaking cases of adoption. Her parent comes back later on. Oh, no, Phil. Don't even talk about it. Don't spoil this marvelous evening. Okay. But you must convince yourself sometime, Marion, that those tragedies used to happen. But not anymore. Now we have laws to protect our home. I know, dear. Nothing has happened even though Billy's been in the public eye for more than a year now.  You should see the size of that trust fund we set up from his earnings. Quite an estate for him after he finishes college and launches his career. That sounds so funny. Finishing college. He's just out of fifth grade.  I won't. Here's the dressing room, Phil. Who is it, please? Mr. and Mrs. Philip Wentworth Weaver. Dad, Mom! Billy, you were simply wonderful to hear.  Gee, thanks, Dad. That's true, dear. I told your father I'd never heard you play quite as well as you did this evening. Good boy. Gee, I felt good. Especially after my stroke of Sally's pet talk just before the concert. It didn't even make me nervous when that funny lady came in here to see me. Just before the performance started. Funny lady? Sure. Didn't she go and see you? I told her right where you were seeing. Billy, we didn't meet anyone tonight. This lady, why do you say she was funny? I don't know, Dad. Just kind of, well, mysterious. That's a lot of questions about... Billy, what kind of questions? Oh, like, how I got started playing the violin. How long I've been playing is my folks for musicians. Where I was going to play next. How often I'd... Sounds like a newspaper woman to me, Marion. Yes, I suppose. You know, and some kind of personal stuff. Like what my folks are like and what you did for a living, Dad. Hmm, pretty nosy. Yeah, and how I like my father and mother. And if you ever had to thank me. And how far back I can remember. Phil, does that sound like a reporter? What gave you the idea she knew us? She did, the way she talked. You know what she reminded me of? No, dear. What did she remind you of? Of somebody who'd come back to see you. Somebody who hadn't seen you for years and years and years. Out of the mouths of days. And if I'd only known the truth then. But I only dimly suspected it. Phil was sure the woman was a curious newspaper columnist. Perhaps trying to dig up the sensational behind-the-scenes story. The next afternoon after school was out. Billy banged into the house. Hi, Mom. Well, what happened in school today, dear? Oh, you know the usual. Where's the peanut butter? I'll make you sandwich, honey. Well. Anything out of the ordinary? No. That's peanut butter and jelly. Oh, Billy, Billy. I meant at school today. Oh, well, no, Mom. Well, yeah, there was, too. At recess, we were out sliding on the ice in the playground. Uh-huh. Well, when all of a sudden somebody called me from the sidewalk. It was this lady. Was it Billy? Sure. This lady at the concert last night. Billy, what did she say to you? Oh, nothing much. Just that she'd seen me again at the concert tonight. I tried not to tremble. I didn't want to betray my fears to Billy. We never kept the truth of his adoption from him. When he became old enough to understand, Phil and I had explained that he was something special. But other parents had to accept the child they got. But we had chosen him out of them. He was proud of them. And out of it had grown a warm, secure and genuine love to match our own for him. But now, here was something shadowy that might be out of his past. Something to shield Billy from until it could be run to Earth. And I intended to run it to Earth that very night. As I sat in the dressing room with Billy. Please. It's fun having you back. You're in the dressing room with me tonight, Mom. Only I wish Dad could be here, too. If only his plane hadn't been delayed. He still might get home tonight, Phil. I hope so. I'm going to phone the airport after this intermission's over. I keep wondering if that funny woman's going to come here again. The way she said. The, uh, the newspaper woman? Uh-huh. You know what? No, what, Billy? I wish you wouldn't come at all. I don't want to be written up in a newspaper. I don't like her at all. Well, you don't have to talk to her, dear, if you don't want to. Who is it, please? Hello, Billy. I took my stuff. Oh, Mom. It's that lady I've been telling you. Mom. Mom, where are you going? Stay there, Billy. Don't leave the room. It's all right. I'll be right back. Well, okay, Mom. Louise Daniels. You're Billy's mother? Yes, I am. I'd have known you anywhere. Those pictures your husband Dan had. Nearly 10 years ago. But I'd never forget them. I, I haven't changed very much. We looked everywhere for you. Even advertised. We thought you were dead? Yes. I was nearly. Why are you here? I, well, I'm living here right now. I don't mean that. I mean here. I don't know. To cause trouble? No, no, Mrs. Weaver. Not that. Then why? Why? Well, I couldn't help it, Mrs. Weaver. I didn't know anything about Willie's whereabouts. Nothing at all, all those years. Then last January, I read about him. I was in San Francisco. I read in the chronicle about him making his first appearance in a big concert. I, I was so proud. I didn't mean to cause any trouble. Then I don't mean to let you. I didn't have anything bad in mind at all, Mrs. Weaver. I only wanted to see him and talk to him a little. I want you to stay out of our lives, Louise Daniels. I don't want you talking to Billy again. Ever. When are you going back to San Francisco? Well, as soon as I can afford it, Mrs. Weaver. I started a job here yesterday. I'll be leaving soon. All right, you'll check for $75. Will that take you to San Francisco? Why? Why, yes. All right. Leave tomorrow. I gave Louise Daniels a check and watched her disappear. I hoped forever. Child with fear, I took Billy home after the concert, put him to bed, and waited for Phil to arrive from the airport. I told him the whole story. He was terribly worried, too. But he did his best to calm me by explaining how well-protected we were. We went back ten years to the days when Phil's newspaper man friend Ben Daniels learned that he had but a few months to live. But why, Louise had left him, abandoned their infant son Billy. He had begged Phil and me to adopt the child, and we were just as eager. And so, after many steps and technicalities, the court approved and Billy became our son. Not a legal stone left unturned, Phil was telling me now. And I remembered the steady, careful methods of our lawyer, John Dwight, who had since passed away. All these memories brought me more confidence, but still I felt the need for an emergency measure. Phil, we're going to take Billy off the concert stage until we're positive that Louise is gone. At least six months, perhaps a year. It's necessary for good. I don't think we're protecting Billy by hiding him away there. Well, there's another reason, Phil. I don't want Billy earning money. You think she's after that sort of thing? I don't know. She might be. I couldn't tell. We'll simply have to wait and see. We waited. A week passed. Nothing happened. Billy, of course, was curious about why we were turning down appearances for him. We explained that we thought he needed a rest, and that seemed to satisfy him for the moment. Another week passed. I began to feel that Louise Daniels had kept her promise. It left Chicago and returned to San Francisco for good. And then on Friday afternoon, Billy raced into the house shouting, Mom, Mom, guess what? They're funny women. I just saw her across the street. By the time I reached the front window, she was just a vanishing figure. But I knew beyond a doubt it was Louise Daniels who turned to pray upon her. I knew it was only the beginning, so I waited. The next day was Saturday, and in the late afternoon... I'll get it, Mom. No, Billy, don't. Hello? Hello there, is this Billy? Yes, ma'am. Who is this, please? This is an old friend of yours, Billy. What's your name, ma'am? Let me take the phone. Okay, Mom. Who did I don't know? Hello? Who is this speaking, please? Hello? Who is this? Hello? The next week was a night time. First, there were the phone calls every evening at the same time. Hello? Hello? Who's there? Hello? It was hard to shoot, Billy. Our newspaper woman story was wearing thin, especially when he came home from school and said, Mom, that lady we don't like. She tried to talk to me at the playground today, but I ran away. She all began driving Billy to and from school, and I tried to be near the playground at recess time just in case. It was horrible. My head ached constantly. Bill neglected his business. We didn't know what to do because we didn't know what she wanted. All we could do was wait. Finally, it happened. Hello? Who is this? Who is this? Is this you, Louise Daniels? Talk to you and your husband. I'll come to your home tonight at eight. I'm not causing too much suspicion. Then at eight o'clock, she arrives. And after some cool formality, we began to understand the mission. No one bothered you and Billy. Once I'd seen my boy that night, I couldn't help you.  I'm a desperate woman. I haven't a penny to my name. I can't seem to work setting either. I'm not well. I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs. Daniels, but I don't see where we fit into the picture. Surely you can't expect us to tolerate it. It means you have everything you could possibly want. Money, health, a beautiful home, and to have my son. Please, must you drag Billy into this? I don't like you, Mrs. Weaver. But I can't stop thinking how Ben kept him from me. How he allowed the adoption without notifying me. He did it without my approval. Without your approval? But you left him a year before. Abandoned your baby. You must have hidden out. Well, that would be hard to prove, Mrs. Weaver. We searched everywhere. We advertised for you. How can you say things might have been a lot different from me now? He's very talented. He earns a lot of money. He doesn't have to work hard. It would have been so nice for the two of us. I wouldn't have to be almost begging. How can you talk like that, his own mother? Mrs. Daniels, I think the sooner we end this conversation, the better. What did you have in mind? In mind? You didn't come here for nothing. Well, I thought you might be able to help me a little. In what way? I thought I might go down to Florida. I have a sister in Miami. I could make a fresh start to get my health back. Of course, that all takes money. I see. Well, how much, Mrs. Daniels? Well, I hadn't thought too much about that. I think, well, I believe $1,000 would take care of me. $1,000. Mrs. Daniels, my wife and I will consider helping you out. Are we to assume that this would assure us you'll leave this area and, nevertheless, Billy or annoy our family again? It's not easy, Mr. Weaver. Wearing I'll never see the child that was taken away from me without my consent. Oh, how can you say that? But I'll do it. You have my promise. Very well, Mrs. Daniels. My wife and I will make our decision tonight and contact you tomorrow. Still and I talked far into the night. I was so nervous I could hardly speak at first, and I know Phil was wretched too. We felt almost as if we were bargaining for Billy. Yet what were the alternatives? Call the police? But can we prove it's blackmail? Go to another part of the country for a few months. Couldn't she follow us? And even if not, when we returned, wouldn't we always live like the hunted? Send Billy to a hideaway boys' school? And tear our family apart, Marion? We explored every possible way, except the obvious one which seems utterly out of the question that leads to me. Marion, we adopted Billy in a completely legal way. Why are we frightened by this woman? But do we know for sure? It was ten years ago. Louise Daniels was assumed missing, possibly dead. And our lawyer, John Dwight, said for nearly eight years now, how can we be sure this woman has no claim? Dear, if there's any doubt, all we have to do is hire another lawyer to check our court records and make sure we're safe. But Phil, that'll arouse intrigue. Make our problems public. You ought to run the risk of losing, Billy. Do you? You know the answer to that, dear. Phil, I know it's not the decent, honest thing to do. But, well, before we lose our own minds, perhaps our child... let's take the chance that Louise Daniels will stay in Florida and never come back again.  Yes, still. Let's give her the thousand dollars. The decision was made. The police came notice. Soon it was morning and that breakfast Phil told me he'd go to the bank and withdraw the thousand dollars in cash. Then he'd call Louise Daniels and arrange a meeting for that night. I wanted to stop him, tell him I changed my mind, but I couldn't find the word. And then Billy came home from his friend's house. Our decision seemed all right again. Hi, Mom. Can I have a donor? Of course you may. Help yourself, dear. Okay. I'm going upstairs and practice for a while. Robbie's mother wanted to know when I was going to play my violin at another concert. But I told her I didn't know for sure. Mom? Yes, dear? When do you think I can play in another concert? Well, dear, I don't know. I simply don't know. Just as quickly our decision to turn sour, when could we let Billy appear in public again? Could we ever, without fear, what kind of a life are we trying to buy for him? For us. And then I knew we were wrong that we had to find out the truth and face up to Louise Daniels to drive away this overhanging crowd. We had to do it with moral courage, not money. I started toward the phone to call Phil and stop him from withdrawing the money from the bank when... Hello? Marion, this is Phil. I've been to the bank.  I discovered something you ought to consider here. When I was going through our safety deposit box, I came across our adoption paper. Phil, did you find something wrong? No, quite the opposite, dear. I found our lawyer's letterhead. I completely forgot. It was Dwight and John Dwight had a partner, his son, and I checked and he's still practicing here in Chicago. Honey, we can't go through with that money over. I know that, Phil. I know it now. If you're frightened about reopening the case, we have our answer now. Surely John Dwight's lawyer son can go into the court record and tell us exactly where we stand without tipping our hands? Yes, and exactly where Louise Daniels stand. Meet me at the office as soon as you can, dear. We're going to see John Dwight's son immediately. I do remember you, of course. I was just greenhorn fresh out of law school when Dad handled your adoption case. I wish my memory had been sharper, Mr. Dwight. I'd have remembered your connection with your father's firm and contacted you long before this. Yes, we'd have saved ourselves many sleepless nights, Mr. Dwight. Well, that reminds me. I'd like to clear up a misapprehension for both of them. While I'm very happy you've called on me to investigate your adoption, you could have consulted any other lawyer without fear of publicizing your situation. Keeping a client's confidence is a lawyer's first concern at all times. We've let our emotions get the better of us, Mr. Dwight. Yes, I understand the court. And I think we'd better go about rebuilding your confidence immediately. A trip to the county courthouse should help a lot. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Weaver, I've investigated every procedure in your adoption case. The original petitions made by you and by Billy's natural father, Mr. Daniels, are on file in the court and are in perfect order. Notice of adoption was published in newspapers for the missing parent for the proper amount of time. You and your home were carefully investigated by the Welfare Department during the first six months Billy was in your custody. Then, since the court was thoroughly satisfied with the arrangement, the adoption decree, which we have right here, was made final. What does that mean? Your fears are absolutely groundless, Mrs. Weaver. No one can take Billy from you. This is such a relief. Mr. Dwight, you can't possibly know us. I'm sorry. There, there, Mary. It's going to be all right now, dear. Yes, it is, Mrs. Weaver. But we're not quite through. For your own peace of mind, you don't want to go on being subjected to further annoyance from Mrs. Daniels. But how can we stop her, Mr. Dwight? Several recourses open. But I recommend the direct approach. Can we arrange a conference with Louise Daniels? I think we find it difficult getting her to come here to your office, Mr. Dwight. But dear, she'll come to our home tonight if we call her, as we told her we would. Could you be there too, Mr. Dwight? Yes, I certainly can, Mrs. Weaver. The sooner, the better. My room all day waiting to hear from you, Mr. Weaver. When it got late, I began to wonder if you were going to call me at all. And then you did. Well, I'm real glad.  Mrs. Daniels, this is our lawyer, Mr. Dwight. How do you do? Lawyer? Say, what is this? What are you trying to do? Mrs. Daniels, we're not trying to force you to stay. But I strongly urge you to stay a moment for your own good. You will want to know where you stand. Well, all right. I'll stay for a minute. Won't you sit down, Mrs. N? No, thank you. Now, what did you want to tell me? Well, first a question, Mrs. Daniels. Why have you persisted in seeing and talking to Billy Weaver this past month? Well, there's no loss as a mother can't see her own son now and then, is there? Mrs. Daniels, do you have any idea you could ever recover custody of Billy? I think I've got a good case. I never gave my consent to this adoption, you know. Someday I might try.  But to save you needless expense, take my word for it. Don't try.  Furthermore, at the time of the adoption, notification was published in newspapers and all other steps were made to locate and notify you. Later facts verified that, actually, you were in hiding at the time. Because you abandoned Billy, your consent to his adoption was not required. Are you beginning to see where you stand, Mrs. Daniels? Yes, on your say so. You're welcome to check it with any lawyer you wish. You'll find I'm speaking the truth, Mrs. Daniels. Yeah?  And I think you should be advised of something else, too. These good people, the weavers, have been harassed and molested by you long enough, Mrs. Daniels. The law provides relief from this sort of persecution and rather severe penalties if it persists. Um... What are you planning to do now? I... Well, I've been in touch with my sister in Florida. She has work for me there. She could advance me the money to get there. I think that's what I'll do. Mrs. Daniels, I think you're being wise. Certainly, it's better to leave this scene completely and start fresh than to stay here and make everybody miserable. Well, if there's nothing more, I... That's all, isn't it, Mr. Dwight? Yes, Mr. Weaver. And I think I'd better leave now. I'll show you to the door. No, don't bother. I can find my way. Hello. Well, Mr. Dwight, your hunch was right the true legal facts convinced to. There's no doubt in my mind that we've seen the last of Louise Daniels. Yes, I haven't climbed to a degree. However, now that she's gone, I can tell you that there were several other ways of stopping her had she persisted. Most erects and effective might have been to go to the superior or circuit court of Cook County, where we'd have obtained a restraining order against Mrs. Daniels. If she'd defied an injunction, she'd have found herself in contempt of court and very likely in jail. Well, I'm glad she was sent there. Oh, um, one comment, Mrs. Weaver. Looking back, it was a mistake to give her that $75 stuff for training. You didn't have to. It accomplished nothing. And actually, it may have served to start Louise Daniels' whole course of action. Yes, I can see how wrong I was now, but what was there? Did you hear something, too? Yes, and I see something, too, at the head of the stairs. Hi, Dad. Hi. We're down there. All right, old Mr. Curiosity. You climb right back into bed and go to sleep. Okay, Mom. Only while I just heard that noise, and I wanted to make sure everything was all right in the house. Oh, yes, silly. Everything is all right in our house. Here to summarize today's case dismissed is your counselor, Dean John C. Fitzgerald, of the Loyola University Law School. Dean Fitzgerald. In matters involving adoption, where emotions are strong factors on both sides of the case, one finds a particularly vital area for practicing what we call preventive law. Unless every step of the adoption is based on firm legal ground, the future for natural and adoptive parents becomes hazardous, painful, and sometimes tragic. There is no shortcut to adoption. Had Marion and Phil in today's story fail to follow in good faith any of the well-established steps toward the sound and final decree of adoption, it is conceivable that they might have lost their son Billy to his natural mother. At best, it would have been a long and trying court battle. Recent Illinois legislation has added even more protection for adoptive parents. Only your lawyer can interpret these laws for you. Again, I remind you that the legal points in this story are based on Illinois law and may not apply in your state. May I point out, too, that the facts in your situation will probably differ from the facts presented in this story. This difference in the facts may change the application of the law. If you are in need of legal counsel and do not know a lawyer and if your income exceeds the limit for the legal aid bureau, get in touch with the Chicago Bar Association. The Association maintains as a public service a lawyer reference plan which will refer you to an attorney. Next week WMAQ and the Chicago Bar Association will take you behind the scenes in a matter involving landlord and tenant on case dismissed. Until then, this is your counselor being John C. Fitzgerald wishing for each of you a good night, good luck and good law. Case dismissed. Or plain answers to some common questions about you and the law write to the Chicago Bar Association for your free booklet entitled Know Your Lawyer. Address your request to Chicago Bar Association 29 South LaSalle Street, Chicago 3, Illinois. Case dismissed is written by Robert Carmen and is based on information supplied by the Chicago Bar Association and its lawyer members. All characters are fictitious and a resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. This is the story of a man alone, Everett Clark, Bruce Lindgren and Charles Flynn. Case dismissed is produced by Betty Ross. Direction is by Herbert LaTolle. Musical effects were transcribed. Sound by Tom Evans. Engineering by Harold Woodaberry. This is Lee Bennett speaking and inviting you to return next Saturday at this same time when we'll bring you a story about the legal rights of landlords and tenants on case dismissed. This is the NBC Radio Network.


What's a gene these days? I think a gene is like art, right? You know, it's up to your interpretation. You know, I know it when I see it. You know, I think we have a much more nuanced view. The genome is dynamic. The idea that most of it is junk DNA I think has now been tempered. We know gene regulation is far more important and far more complex. But, you know, we remain with a view that in and of itself DNA is an incredibly inert molecule. It is the blueprint for cellular machines.


Hello everyone, my name is Gafra. Since the lockdown is on, I'm sure we're falling short of stationery. So I'm here to show you a very fun, amazing activity that will not require much of things, but yet it will keep your children engaged. We are going to make a garland, but who says garlands can only be made out of flowers. We are going to make it out of newspapers, but not in the shape of flowers. It's going to be in the shape of circles. So let us see what all you require to do this activity. All you need to have is newspapers to cut circles about 25, a bottle cap, q-tips, a fabricol, pencil, scissors and two post-a-paint colors of your choice. So let us begin with our activity. I'm going to fold the newspaper like this, make it as small as you can, and then I am going to... We're going to take the bottle cap and draw the circle like this. We need approximately 25 circles. So this is one set and this is the other set. So I am done drawing the circle. Let us see how many circles come out of each set. We have cut the circles out. We have done cutting our circles and now all you need to do is dip your q-tips in the paints and start dabbing it like this. You can use any favorite color of yours. I prefer yellow and red because red is my favorite color and yellow gives me the positive vibe. So we are going to do it like this and the red one like this. You can keep the child and crossed for at least an hour or two with this activity. So we are done dabbing yellow and red color on our circles. So we will start placing them and start sticking them with a fabricol in the shape of a garland. We will take the edge of it and start sticking. So you can stick it one red, one yellow, maybe red and red, yellow and yellow. It's all on your choice as per the way the child wants to stick it. Keep sticking it till you get your desired length. We are almost done making our garland. So here we didn't require any kind of thread or satin ribbon or anything as such. You can make a lot of things by just using the simple form of mousse paper. So we are done sticking this. We will give it some time to dry. This is how our garland looks tonight. Let me wear it and show it to you. Doesn't this look beautiful? I am sure you must have enjoyed this activity. For now, take care, stay home, stay safe. Thank you. Bye.


Thank you Ada and thank all of you for being here today. I also want to thank The WordPress organizers and all the volunteers. This is awesome I am so impressed with everything that you've accomplished. I can tell you've put in some long Dedicated hours. I also want to thank a couple of people that because of them I'm able to be here today and speak one of them in the room is Joe Simpson, Ron Amick Rob from Maine WP and Yoast and of course the meet-up groups in my area Santa Clarita Valley meet-up and Accessible web plus WordPress in San Fernando Valley. So thank you all the people who are in the room today I know it's been a long day so far and I hope to keep you awake for the rest of the afternoon before we get to the good times for dinner and cocktails. I Want to let you know that my slides are available But I also have to warn you my slides are not full of text my slides are mostly images I learned a long time ago that people remember images So you may not remember the words I say exactly, but if you see something that's an image that I used it will remind you It's a nice trigger. So I happen to use images So you may find my slides at bit.ly. That's B I T dot L Y forward slash W C U S 23 and I'm going to allow you to know in advance that I may be standing at times I may be sitting at times those of you in the room saw that I walked to the stage with a little bit of assistance So if you see me disappear behind the podium, I'm still here Look up on the web as the kitten is sitting on the keyboard of a laptop computer looking at the screen It's a designer and there's a beautiful butterfly with wings of gorgeous several colors It's a developer and there's a picture of code that is used on a website There's a silhouette of two people standing in capes Wait, it's a web accessibility superhero Faster than a speeding bullet list Perceivable operable understandable robust Able to leap tall landmarks in a single bound header section navigation Consumes weak hag success criteria with every meal More powerful than a loco overlay And on the screen we have a computer screen with the words accessible to all and we have superheroes avatars that are showing up on screen Your web accessibility superheroes are A large group of people many in this room It is a group of people of all ages all sizes all shapes All abilities and all disabilities It is a group of people that you may find your quiet sweet mild mannered next door neighbor Or it may be your outrageous loud-spoken redhead Or someone with purple hair or pink hair That just won't stop talking about it But that's okay. It's that important But one thing this entire diverse group of web accessibility superheroes have in common is they all know That web accessibility is an inside job on the screen. I have a beautiful tree The leaves are a variety of colors, but you can also see the roots When this tree was planted it was very important that that seed be planted appropriately Those roots now have to be nourished They have to be tended to regularly in Order for that tree to maintain its beauty and its growth. The roots cannot be ignored So why web accessibility? This is a question that I do get asked at times and so I'd like you to think are you interested in web accessibility? because You found out From a web aim report that over 95% of web sites when tested were not accessible and the Entrepreneur in you said well, there is a business opportunity. I can make a difference Or are you one of those people that recognize that it's more than 25% of our population? globally That are disabled because it's not just those that are registered on the statistics It's also those who have friends and family who care and they only want to do business with businesses and websites that are ethically accessible to those that they love and That percentage is awfully low because it doesn't include Situational disabilities or people like me today who have a temporary disability In my case, I had a choice to make between falling over the dog or falling off the sidewalk And you can tell the dog won So that number of percentage of people who need a website to be accessible is actually larger than that 25% or Are you one of those people that is involved with web accessibility because it's the right thing to do? Or is it D all of the above? Personally, I believe it's D But there's also a question that I want you to ask yourself Why is web accessibility? important to you and Why do you want to be a part of making websites accessible? Because that affects how you're going to talk about it the who the what the why and That how make a difference based on how you Are committed to or perceive or are involved with accessibility if You are someone who is passionate about accessibility you care about the who and You care about the what which is making the website is accessible making the internet accessible and You care about the why? Because they deserve it. It's the right thing to do and in some cases. It's a civil right and You're also the type of person who is going to explain it ethically, and you're going to correctly do your web accessibility As part of your baked into the project. It's not an afterthought When I ask people how they talk about web accessibility I can get an idea of what kind of commitment they have and the struggles that they're facing in talking to their clients and It in my perception the more that you're involved with web accessibility the more you understand its value The more you feel for yourself that it's a benefit the easier it is to talk about Too many of our clients as we learn from the web aim report Never learned about it initially never thought about it initially and their web person didn't tell them and So when web aim does their one million site review every year and they find that over 95% of websites are still not accessible There's a lot of education that we need to do I Hear people tell me that web accessibility is hard You know sometimes getting up in the morning is hard But I'm glad that we do I remember when I first was introduced to WordPress and somebody said hey It's so easy. You're going to love it. It's great It wasn't for me It was hard. I didn't understand What it was I was supposed to be doing how I was supposed to do it and how come they thought it was so easy There was a learning curve And it's the same with web accessibility if you have not done it in the past and you're just now learning it It may occasionally seem hard because there's a learning curve But once you understand it it becomes an automatic part of the work that you do You build it into every website from the planning. It's not an afterthought When I go out and buy a new car if I at that time say well, you know what just give me any old car And don't include any air conditioning I'm doing okay until we come to a day like today here in DC. This humidity is just knocking me out I like the air conditioning so now I would have to take my car Back to a dealer or a car place and have them install air conditioning for me They're going to have to take it apart They're going to have to adjust a whole lot of components that Possibly weren't needed if the air conditioning had been installed in the first place It's the same with web accessibility when we build web accessibility in the initial Stage of our website. It is so much easier than going back in after the fact to remediate and Undoing the work that we've done Taking it apart step by step putting it back together Making sure everything plays well together and that can be very frustrating So if you want to make it easy Then we start by letting it be easy If you're the type of person that talks about web accessibility and on the screen I've just placed the face of a cat and a dog with horrified looks on their face If you go into a client and say lawsuit lawsuit lawsuit you're going to get sued everybody's going to take your money You're in trouble. I'm here to save you My experience has been that client is the least receptive Reason being is now they feel attacked You may be not the one that's attacking them, but they feel attacked They feel betrayed because whoever built their website didn't include it and The people that they take it out on are the disabled community They blame the disabled community that they're in trouble. It's an emotional thing So my recommendation is please don't start there Why would we want to give ourselves something difficult to overcome some people think that's the easy way through the door It doesn't work for me. I can't tell you it will be easy for you Not to do it or to do it but in my experience. It is the more difficult way and I personally like things easy It's so easy to learn about web accessibility The information is around us. I always tell people start with the course the free course on W3.org forward slash W AI and it is the introduction to web accessibility and it's free It will go over the who what how why give you a real up close and personal look of At people and the struggles that they have trying to access a website You will be able to witness these through videos people that need the website to be accessible and the difference that it makes I suggest looking on your dashboard of your WordPress site There are a number of meet-ups around the country around the globe that focus on accessibility Just do a search and you will find them and they have a number of meet-ups that focus on accessibility on WordPress and you can find them through your WordPress dashboard or through your meet-up Obviously come to WordCamp. We're here. We're working together. We're networking. Let's talk web accessibility And my favorite is the California State University of Northridge CSUN has a disability accessibility Technology conference once a year in March over 5,000 people in attendance over four days and all we talk about is technology web accessibility and user experience So if you have an opportunity to be near Anaheim in March, I would suggest don't miss it and of course Who can forget? We've got the web content accessibility guidelines When I was first brought to my attention that it was my fault that websites were not accessible and I certainly was embarrassed and humbled to find that out. I thought I was building great websites I was really proud of them But someone that is close to me who is blind wasn't able to access these sites So I would describe them. I thought I was doing a great job Until someone from Freedom Scientific showed up with a screen reader called JAWS And went to various sites and showed her what these sites sounded like through a screen reader. I was so excited I said here. Here's one of the sites I built. Please go there And he did and it was horrible So I thought well, okay fine. Here's one. I just finished. I'm so proud of this Please go take your screen reader to this site. So he did It was even worse What that screen reader said is it found its way across that web page was not what I was hoping it was going to do and I said I hear a website. It's really messed up And he said no ma'am Your website is really messed up I learned that day that I was the person that was causing the issue And I sought out to find a way to learn Today we have a lot more places to get education But the standards the web content accessibility standards Give us all an even working ground I would not recommend that you attempt to digest and absorb all of these at the same time It'd be like having your favorite meal laid out at buffet and you go over there and you say I'm just going to have it all All my food at the same time Not only is it impossible you'd be sick at trying So please do not do that to yourself with the web content accessibility guidelines Take them Reference them access them as you need them and you will find that doing web accessibility becomes easier and easier However Don't just rely upon We keg We have humans that access the web We need to be concerned about the human the user experience that that's not technical So there are things that we need to remember to do beyond The technical portion of we keg Why would we want to use wordpress? For web accessibility Could it be that The majority of websites around the globe are built on wordpress Could it be Well that it's easy to learn Has a learning curve, but generally easy to learn. Could it be that it is customizable could it be That there is a team on make dot wordpress dot org that is dedicated to the accessibility of wordpress And yesterday at the contributors day I had the pleasure of sitting with a number of folks That their passion is web accessibility and making sure that wordpress Inside and out is accessible So is it these four things or is it d and together now? all of the above That is for good reasons to use wordpress to build your site Plus we have not a lot of talking This particular image on the screen is a pink ribbon that has Pearls on it and it's on a website That is breast cancer awareness And this image was placed in the content when they were giving away pearls as part of a campaign So the alt description on this particular item is a pink ribbon with Embellished with pearls because it fit the content Another place on the website they changed the alt text because It didn't fit the content and they wanted it to fit the content which is appropriate Now in order to do that they couldn't do it in the media library They had to go through a text field where the alt description was And manually change it for that other page Because it was important to them that they wanted to make sure that the images fit the content and the alt description also did AI is also good at doing captions for our video We can caption live speaking events. We can caption videos Doing so not only is now a requirement for a lot of videos But it also relates to the image and brand of your client if they put videos on their website How well done those captions are says a lot about that client and how well you do that for the client Says a lot about the services you offer Now my name is Sumner. That's s-u-m n-e-r And many times AI has said my name is summer with an m2m And I must say I'm not a season It is also said I am some turf Which I think is Fort somewhere in the south Where some war was There you go. See that's not me either It is also called me thumper Which I know is a rabbit in a disney movie, but I also know that there's a video game from the 60s or 70s called thumper But my favorite Is it calls me thunder Now I know at times that I do get loud and people have commented when I get excited that I do but come on This one's just rude So AI does its part, but seldom does it get my name correctly and I personally think I have an easy name So when you think about what AI will do to your client's voice to the words that they speak in their videos, it's important A few years ago, we had a presidential inauguration in the united states and Amanda Gordon read one of her poems What she said was a country bruised but whole Benevolent but bold and those of you in the room can see that that is not what AI said It said is bruised but whole whole Benevolence but bold fierce and now it is kind of amusing Except to someone who really relies upon captioning So if a deaf person wanted to know what she really said That was not it And we have to be careful if that's the way AI is hearing the voices some of our clients May not like that either So in a live presentation We want to make sure and we are very fortunate that we have white coat captioning that is doing live Transcript today for you So we have a human That is capturing our words So we won't have those kind of mistakes If you are a person that likes to sing along with music and you like the lyrics Well, don't ask AI to give you the words to root off the red nose reindeer Because what it says on here in the english language i'll say that read can be read and it can be read So we'll give them that but when it says Read off the rent those reindeer I think it's way off base So here's where it you could use AI to begin with But now hopefully you're seeing that human Needs to get in there and make some changes AI is also what runs the automatic checkers that so many people use to test websites for accessibility And on the screen, I have an image of What looks like a stamp that says test passed But those that can see this image can see that there's some pieces missing from it The words kind of aren't filled in all the way it's kind of scratchy It's just not as crisp as you would expect for something that it just passed So what that is telling me is that AI is not 100% In fact yesterday when I was in the contributors day at the accessibility table There was a person sitting next to me who shared an article That the government in the uk ran a test on the 10 most popular automatic web accessibility testers And they wrote a blog report on their results So What do you think was the highest level of finding? Oh wait, let me tell you They wanted to make sure that it was a fair test So they created a web page with 148 errors Intentionally created these errors. They knew what they were and they knew That they should be easy to find So of all of these 10 automatic accessibility checkers some names some of you may know and use What do you think was the highest level of success? Anyone 70 you said thank you, but 30 close That highest level of accuracy was 40 percent It got as low as 19 percent And these were common errors Errors that they knew would be found in almost every one of their government websites So they were appalled to find out that AI could not find them This is why if you use an automatic tester to test your website You need to include persons with disabilities The statement that nothing about us without us Means that if you're going to build a website that's accessible and you want to make sure that it is Let us test it and tell you I feel very fortunate that I have a team of people that work with me And many members of that team Are persons with disabilities So they will give me up close personal Experience feedback as to whether or not what we created is actually working So one of my associates is blind and he will test with the JAWS screen reader And he will give me feedback as if he went to that website For the purpose of buying or using or gaining information from whatever was posted there And he will tell me how easy was it able to navigate Did it recognize The code to tell him what was the most important thing on the page the h1 Did it tell him how many h2s were on the page all the subheadings Was he able to get to the various content that he wanted and use the forms If not then we need to fix it where the AI may have told us it was okay Always good He will also tell me if the alt text descriptions were sufficient for the content on the page AI will not tell us that it will tell us there is text and text description But not if it's good If it fits the content of the page So we must have the human get involved To let us know that we're doing it right and we're on the right path When we want to include web accessibility in our satchel and in our toolbox what we're offering our clients It is very important that what we offer them reduce so with integrity that we are able to tell them. Yes This site has been Tested looked at overseen participated in By persons with disability the users that are going to access your website And so now I I know that at this point people go. Well, I don't know anybody. Where am I going to find these people? Well, while you're here at word camp you could kind of meet a few people and we will tell you where we find disabled workers to Work on websites with us or you could go to a company site called nobility. That's k-n-o-w b-i-l-i-t-y They have an entire division where they employ persons with disabilities for the purpose of testing and assisting with remediation of websites So that now you don't have to employ additional people But you certainly can have additional people be employed because you use their services This is very important my company The majority of our clients are brought to us by attorneys Attorneys who are representing companies who have either received a demand letter or are Negotiating a legal settlement Because their website was not accessible So even though it's not on my list of how I present web accessibility. It's how I spend most of my day I'm a specialist in web accessibility. I do not call myself an expert I personally believe that an expert has all the answers or a whole lot more than I do However, because this is what I specialize in I know where to get an answer So I don't have to fill my brain because if my brain gets too full it falls out the other side So I do keep people close at hand that can help me when I need an answer So I want to share with you quickly The top three things you may not have thought about that we see most often come across Some of these cases now. I know when I was talking to someone earlier He said, oh, it's always color contrast and I am here to say no, it's not Although color contrast comes in a lot of the time and it appears that web designers are now Paying more attention to it. What comes in more often than anything is the structure of the website The structure of the website That is not accessible to a person who does not use a mouse Can someone go through that website using only the tab key on their keyboard and you can test that very simply You go to your browser bar Where your url is go to the end of your url and hit the tab key on your keyboard And keep hitting it and see where it goes. Does it follow the flow of your website? Does it land where you are expecting it to land? Does it go from left to right from top to bottom? Sorry, I just hit my microphone If it does yay, if it does not Then you need to revisit How you structured your website Are your headings in order? Do you have proper navigation? We have found in our cases a number of sites That the tab will go to a navigation But if there's drop down and it goes to the first one on the drop down You should be able to hit your space bar and have it launch that To the wherever that link is supposed to go if it doesn't That needs to be fixed. That is the one we see the most The other one we also see is if the tab lands on a form And it gets stuck. We call that a keyboard trap The one that we find the most is when you have those dates that have that carousel And you have to find the date for your month your date your year. I don't like those because I am spinning Forever to find the year I was born And at the same time however For someone using a keyboard it can be trapped. They can get stuck there and never get out of that field So unless you can find a way to fix that on your website Don't put it there Give the user the opportunity to manually enter That date or the time or whatever it is you were using that carousel for originally if we find that There is a problem with the keyboard excuse me keyboard only navigation That's going to be on every single one of your pages in your website. So it's quite Global and serious if they cannot access your home page How are they going to access any of the information within your website? And this is what we find is in a lot of the cases Sometimes it's easy for us to fix by getting rid of a particular plugin they may be using for a menu And finding another one that's better Sometimes we have to manually have them rewrite their menu So it really depends on how they built the site either way. We've got to take it apart to fix it The other thing we see a lot The issues with is the headings and design and what I have on the screen is Cement blocks in a path in the grass I personally suggest that the people that work for me before they start working on a website they plan it They know what's the most important information they want to convey. That's our header What's the second most what supports that header? What our h2 is going to be and do we have information that supports those sub headers? That would be an h3 we plan it in advance and That same plan applies to all pages If we have not planned out our h1s h2s h3s and so forth I saw a site that came across my desk just before I left for this trip And they had their h1 probably about two-thirds the way down the page On the next page they had eight of them And when I asked why and in between these h1s they had a few h6s And I asked why and the designer said well, it's in the style sheet If I want that size font And that look well, then that's what the style sheet says So I'd like to suggest to not be controlled by your style sheet That do not use it to style and design your website you can change What those h1s h2 fonts and such are in your style sheet, but don't let it control you You are the one that determines what that styling is and make it consistent That also brings in the design and the colors you use and the layout We have a site we're working on right now that every page gives the impression. It's a different website They thought it was cool It gave me a headache Be consistent in your design so someone knows they're still on your site And by doing so you make it easy for the user to get the information they came for And follow the path Some of you may be aware that there is a report. It's called the pound away report. You can google it It was done by a uk company And they found through all of their studies and statistics that over 60 Of people will bounce from a website Within the first four seconds if it's not accessible So if you have an e-commerce site and somebody lands because they want to buy a product But in that first four seconds they can't navigate They're gone your client has a very high bounce rate and a very low sales rate If you have a site that's informational and they cannot get to where they think they need to be on that site in the first Four minute four seconds. They're gone That's a very high bounce So if you want people to stay on your site make it a design That makes it easy Make a path. So when they land, where do you want them to go? What is the user experience? What do you hope they want to accomplish when they land there? Are they looking for answers and information make it easy to find If they want to buy a product make it easy for them to find the product find the product description get it into the card and check out Play customer and see what obstacles you may find This is also another area where it's essential to have a person with a disability Test that portion of your site e-commerce sites Are kind of in the target right now because they're so popular and people really need the information But if they can't buy what they're trying to buy when they get to the site, they're gonna bounce Make it easy for them to find what they want to buy Have a person with a disability Go to the site try to buy something And tell you what obstacles they had to overcome to do so I believe I've spoken fast, but I promise that they would be 10 things that I would suggest that you do Accessibility should be at the top of the list. It should be baked into your website It should be part of your plan. It should be everything that you do with a website should have accessibility in mind I do suggest that you go visit the w3.org and take that free class that's so essential And remember nothing about us without us include persons with disabilities in the work that you do Double check the use of your ai On your alt text make sure that your descriptions fit your content Unless it's decorative and then make it so Make sure that your captions are Correct and a friend of mine called meryl evans who is deaf has coined the phrase Corruptions because if they're not correct they pretty much that's what they are So make sure that your captions are correct Even though I will answer to thunder It's not my name Do more than auto checkers. They're great to start, but don't let them be the end of what you do Make sure your structure is correct Make sure that a person with a keyboard only can access your website Test it for yourself Make sure your design is consistent I suggest that you join the make dot wordpress.org and contribute This is not a place that you go post a question and get help and answers But it is a place that you have knowledge and expertise to be able to share With others as well Is a place though if you want to get answers you can go peruse What people have posted and you might find what you're looking for but it's not a help desk But it is an opportunity to contribute to wordpress So you go into make dot wordpress dot org and you look at all the available committees And see the one that you'd like to participate in If you really want to learn how to do captions, I suggest you go to wordpress dot tv Pull up a video or two. There are instructions on the website how to do captions for wordpress tv There's videos there that have been there for so long that they were never captioned And so that means that certain people cannot watch those videos Be part of the contribution and go and help by making those captions You will learn after doing it a couple of times the easiest way to do it But there are instructions step by step right there on wordpress.tv to do just that So of all of this that I had said You too can be a web accessibility superhero It's not that difficult and it's a whole lot of fun I met someone last night and he said if you had three takeaways from what you're going to share today What would you like people to remember and I said well after pondering I would suggest you commit to web accessibility Make it important Secondly, do it ethically Don't be the person just throws in a plug-in Or something else and tells the client that's as good as it gets and please now that I've told you that the ai is not Going to do the job for you don't promise a client a hundred percent And certainly don't guarantee And third have fun Web accessibility can be fun. You're making the internet better for everyone And you will be a person that is Standing apart from the crowd You will gain new clients and fun clients when they know that what you offer is inclusive You may not know that certain clients have a disability Because some disabilities are not visible I have a client that they wanted to change the colors on their website And I said you really can't do that because the contrast is really bad and he said this is what I want I said okay So we walked around his office with my laptop asking various people. What do you think of these new colors? Okay, everybody gave their input. We walked into his partner's office and his partner said stop. Don't ask me I'm colorblind He didn't even know that his own partner was colorblind And when I showed him the contrast on the colors he wanted to select his own partner would not have been able to read What was on his website? So he would have disabled his partner And his partner's access to that website So you will get the opportunity to educate clients in a way that no one else will Be their advocate as well Make sure that when you make their website accessible It's because you want them to succeed The better their website is The more users that it will attract and users that will come back They will be happy with you If you put them in a position Where they don't get the results that they want they will not be happy with you But they are according to the web aim report over 95 of the websites could use your help So the wonderful opportunity to make a difference I gave my gratitude at the beginning But I have this slide up here at the end as well because I'm very grateful to be here and be able to talk about web accessibility And I haven't seen a sign come up yet. So I'm assuming that I have time for questions if someone has a question Yes Do we have a microphone or can you yell out? Okay I'm just uh curious if you're aware what what is the most common screen reader at the time that um people Who are visually impaired are using um Back in the day when I first started building websites, you had to buy this very expensive thing and Are there um tools people are using now that aren't so expensive that are built into os's Great question and thank you for asking and here's where I'm glad that we had live captioning because up here I could not hear what she was saying But I could look at the screen And white coat made sure they understood you correctly So she asked about the screen readers the jaws was the first one that I was introduced to that was introduced to my family And it is the one that you do pay for However nvda is a free download you can go to nvda. You can download it to your computer And by doing so you can test it out for yourself and see what it sounds like you can go through the adjustments of the sound and the speed Most of the people that I'm associated with that use a screen reader on a regular basis They speak have the sound very fast. The voice is speaking very fast faster than I can understand But they do and that's all that is important But you can see the controls that they have for their screen reader There's also the Ones that are built into the accessibility features on your android and your iphone Because they have been upgraded to include accessibility you can use those to check out Your mobile placement of your website. How is it functioning on mobile devices? You can also get nvda for mobile So you can see if a person is using a screen reader separate from the one that's built into the phone Or the tablet and like I said, it's a no charge unless you want to give them a donation, which is always great And so, uh, there's that I've also been asked from time to time the font that I use on my slides is called Acacin hyper legible And acacin is an organization For the blind and the reason that I choose the font it has the appropriate spacing The appropriate size and all of the letters are very clear that you can read them So when you choose a font You want to make sure that as many people as possible can read that font And I've received a lot of comments by using this font that it is readable and it's not harsh on the eyes Yes, sir awesome question I don't see that it came on the microphone. So i'm going to attempt to repeat your question Okay, you were asking about carousels And when something changes images from one image to the next Or when it changes one text to the next Okay, carousels Can be problematic And the reason that the problematic is first off according to the wikag standards We need to be able for the person to stop That carousel So that someone that needs to see what it's on the screen they have the choice For it to be there longer most carousels don't have that feature Most carousels become decorative images because There's no alt description for the images. So a screen reader misses them entirely Most carousels that i've seen done by plugins are not accessible by keyboard only So you have a large chunk of your website That your user cannot access If there's a way that you can take the information in that carousel and put it in your content You will find a greater benefit from it Also, there are times that people move the carousel so fast That no one can really absorb what was there. That's a cognitive issue Anyone with a cognitive disability is going to bounce That's also disruptive if there's somebody that has long covet right now Many of them have a cognitive disability that they cannot tolerate something changing rapidly on a website And they will bounce so we have a new segment of disability So why would you want a carousel? What are you wanting to accomplish? You want to show multiple images of a facility and the purpose is Aesthetic so you want people to be wowed by these images Okay, so you don't want them to know what else is on the website Do you want them to sit there and watch this little movie of changing images? Hmm When we choose something on our website, let's look at the value The value to the greatest number of users And let's just take it out of the equation. Let's say they had nothing to do with accessibility Is that what you want your users to be focused on when they get there and nothing else? Just look at all these pretty pictures sliding by Not now when you think about it In addition to But where do you usually place the carousel? Isn't it in the hero section? Okay, so when they land on your website, that's what they get If it's not accessible, that's when they leave So all that great information you wanted to absorb there must be a better way to present it Of course, of course we get these requests from clients I remember requests I would get from clients and they would say I want you to take the underlying out of those links It's ugly And I'd go no it's not Because if a client talks to me that way, I just kind of mimic it back But I tell them that it is essential that we have those links underlined For accessibility and so when a keyboard lands on those it also have additional focus So no, we're not taking the links out, but I'll make your website layout Attractive enough that you'll like those underlines on links So I think clients need us to educate them that yeah, that's a great idea. Can I make it better? Can I take your idea and make it better so the users on your website Do what you want when they get there You're welcome. Yes, ma'am The captioner did not get your question. So I will try to repeat what I think I heard You are talking about a browser when you launch your computer You open up in microsoft edge And you get what looks like a news layout of a lot of different sections I personally don't use microsoft edge. So I can't give you personal feedback on that But here's a couple of things I do know Microsoft is a big company microsoft has a very strong dedication to accessibility Microsoft has also said in several of their presentations that if it's not working now it will be That if we have created something that has a barrier let us know we will do something about it They have a real commitment So I can't answer to it because I personally don't experience it. I don't go to microsoft edge But I would say That microsoft has someone that would know that answer Since it's their product You're welcome. Thank you for asking Did I need to see another hand? I know we're down to the last few minutes I don't want to miss anyone if you come up with a question afterwards feel free my contact information is on the screen Please send me a tweet send me an email follow me on linkedin Linkedin is an excellent place to find persons who are disabled who are willing to test and work with you on your website Linkedin is an excellent place to find individuals that are dedicated to web accessibility And you can network with them. So I encourage you to do that And if you have a question you may also send me an email I will answer as promptly as I possibly can But I really appreciate all that you've been here and I appreciate all of your questions