A completely underestimated part of our constitution came into being 150 years ago today, 18th July 2022. This was the Secret Ballot Act. Before 1872, anyone emancipated by the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 would still have had no real vote. Anyone who held their land from someone else…

A good friend of mine is going into work to teach online. That’s right. This is a teacher, being asked to go into a school, to teach online, because the kids are not in school. The children are not in school, because most of the teachers are not in school…

Years ago I came across a poem of mine online. I did not recognise my own poem at first. This was the early days of ‘online’, and all the line breaks had gone. A magazine had done it; it had been written for print. It wouldn’t happen now. …

Wagnerians will know about the Gesamtkunstwerk: the complete work of art. Wagner wanted his operas to fuse and meld stage and sound so that his composition was seamless and total in all human dimensions. That went against the entire trend of society before Romanticism, which had been towards specialisation, division…

When you think about alternative text, it is sometimes better not to think about text at all. Think, instead, about listening. Imagine someone (or remember someone!) who blethers on, and on, and on. What did you listen to; what did you hear? Think, also, about speaking. When you talk to…

They tell you that there is a straightforward standard for colour contrasts, but for thing, it’s about the contrasts — not the colours. Forget red and green. Not everyone sees red; not everyone can tell red from green. Think: blue. Blue does not ‘have a good contrast’. Navy blue against…

Magnetic paint can be encoded. A monitor screen can be made into a bendy sheet, like a roll of paper. The code that tells a screenreader to speak one word aloud is the same code that tells a computer what word to represent as a series of lights on a…

You know the first ten seconds of the interview? How the handshake, meeting the eye, standing appropriately, being dressed for the part — all make a first impression that probably, you cannot undo? When sighted people read a screen or a page, they have already had their first impression. They…

There are Christians in America who cluster the flag, the Bible, and the handgun, together. I can’t imagine what ‘Christian nationalism’ could be, given that the Church is a ‘pilgrim Church’; given that every one of us is peregrinus in terra aliena, with our patria in heaven. But while all…