In my accidental quest to create accessible diagrams to a computer science student I have been contracting for, I found in the post-secondary field a massive lack of care given to the topic of accessible diagrams, even when they are relatively easy to create. For example, a binary tree, or any tree structure actually has native aria-role attributes to alert a screen reader to the presence of a tree object. A tree is only a list of lists after all.

What I’m Doing Now

Although I sort of thought my career was going in a different direction after starting a full-time job in August, I think I’m the right guy to create a good system for this. I will be using my existing company Bytetools to create and sell these tools to universities. It will be all open-source (GPLv3), but access to a website that I maintain for an institution will cost a bunch of money that only a university can afford.

Side note: This is how to make money with open source: Create the software (free and libre), then host the software for a monthly fee. Invoice Ninja uses this strategy, and I think it strikes the appropriate balance between the need to live off of something you care about and creating free and open-source software. For the vast majority of people it makes more sense for them to purchase a subscription to your site than to find someone who can setup a website for them alone.

So, here goes nothing…