what does it mean when we talk about awesome women being awesome?

Karen Healey's guest post over at the book smugglers, "on awesome female characters", calls into question the entire idea of praising people for writing awesome/kick ass female characters. Karen is S-M-R-T smart, and her ideas are smart -- and she then goes on to write an utterly fabulous list of awesome female characters. Because I love every one of the characters in there that I recognized (Tip Tucci! Syrah Cheng! Cass Meyer! Melanie Tamaki!), I'm going to have to add every other book and movie mentioned to my miles-long To Be Read list. *Shakes tiny fist at Karen*

Not to mention that I adore the vid she links to at the bottom of the article, fizzyblogic's "What About", which I just watched to get some inspiration to start the rest of my day.

(OK, I don't agree with everything Karen says. I was not a big fan of Princess Ben; it had some fat hate that made me sad. And before cheerleading becomes an Olympic sport, there are some fairly major issues around sports and sexism that need to be resolved. (Fair warning: that link is specifically about US sports politics and Title IX, and Karen is a New Zealander (ETA MEA MAXIMA CULPA), and the Olympics are international. But it's the link I knew off the top of my head and I'm supposed to be working.))

(But she is still wicked smart, is what I'm saying.)

signal boost: dw_accessibility

I'd like to signal boost the community dw_accessibility. One of the things that's so awesome about dreamwidth is that the developers and style designers really care about universal design, and making the site equally usable and beautiful for people with disabilities. One of the ways they do that is by getting feedback from us, the users with disabilities.

It's important for all of us that when questions get asked in the community, those of us who have computing-based accessibility needs pitch in to answer. The most noticeable place we have a shortage is screenreader users; since studies show that there is no typical screenreader user, it would be really valuable to have more than one or two regulars answering questions about what is the best site design first screenreader users.

But we also need people with all kinds of other accessibility needs: voice users, keyboard-only users, people with visual processing disabilities, zoom users, deaf-blind users, people with cognitive disabilities, etc. Basically, if your disability means that site design and site coding have an effect on your ability to use and enjoy the site, you will be a welcome contributor over at dw_accessibility.

Thank you, awesome people. And please signal-boost as appropriate.