Winter's Here in DC!

Wreaths on 16th Street

Snow on K Street

Well, winter came upon us in Washington, D.C. this week with cold winds and even some wet and sloppy snow today. Although I had a big coat and hat and gloves and managed to stay warm, I didn't have boots on and sure enough stepped into a puddle of cold melting snow and got my shoes and feet all freezy and squishy. Perhaps someone was trying to cheer me up later when they said that it's not really winter until the 21st of December when it's the solstice. So, I looked that up and that's the longest night and shortest day. But when I thought about that it would seem that we would then be moving toward shorter nights and longer days the next day. And this would happen until we get all the way to summer on June 21st which is really when "winter"  starts, back there when I was moaning about the heat and blogging about the fountains here in DC and right after the longest day and shortest night we'd be heading back to winter again. But today it was definitely winter and I was glad to get home to my cozy, Christmas-light festooned house and to rest and think about Advent.  

Snow on 16th St

• Winter Solstice (socyberty.com)

Franklin Square

14th Street

Telecommunications Titans and Those COAT People

I nearly fell over with surprise at an event this past Tuesday when Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts included me in a list of five people that he named and said we were "telecommunications titans." Interestingly, a co-worker snapped a shot of the live captioning behind him as he said it. So here it is, immortalized on the screen behind his head, at the celebratory event in the very grand Caucus Room of the U.S. House Cannon building. The five of us have been called several things along the way as we have lobbied for disability accessible technology policy over the last five years, but this one is the most interesting moniker! I consider it a great honor to have been called out like this in a public venue where there were almost 200 people, including a senator, the chairman of the FCC, several administration appointees and no end of other highly influential Washington DC people! At another event we were referred to as "the COAT People" as our coalition's acronym is COAT. That one made us all laugh, particularly as it was said in a very matter-of-fact tone by a private sector attorney -- that we all loved to work with -- at another public event. Our legislation was signed by the President in October. Learn more about COAT here.

Related articles

• Rep. Ed Markey: Building Online Ramps to Equal Access (huffingtonpost.com)
• Bill to make Web, mobile more accessible to disabled clears Congress (zdnet.com)