Every Friday I write down what LFW actually did that week. Week one, week two.
This is week three.
Two proposals out
Two went out this week, both on Wednesday. As before, every one says plainly that LFW is new, and points to my own record instead of a client list.
- A county in Kansas, by email, a day before the deadline
- A city in Georgia, four printed copies by Priority Mail plus a digital copy the same afternoon
I can't name them while they are deciding.
The mailed one taught me something. It was due Monday at 2 p.m. and shipped Wednesday, which should have been plenty.
Then the city wrote back: the building is closed on Saturday. The delivery attempt fails, and the redelivery is Monday morning.
Lesson recorded: mail a week early, not five days early. Priority Mail is fast; government buildings keep office hours.
Nine more in the queue
Five are written and waiting for their deadlines or for a signature:
- A housing authority in Maryland (next Friday)
- A regional planning commission in Missouri
- A law firm in New York (Monday)
- A park district in Ohio
- A community radio station in California
Four more are in progress: a state university in California, a council of governments in California, a transit authority in Illinois, and a planning district commission in Virginia.
The Missouri one has a story. The commission's RFP page disappeared from its website, so on Wednesday afternoon I emailed the executive director to ask whether it was still open.
She replied in three minutes, with the RFP attached. The proposal was drafted that night.
Two of those ask for five years of history from the firm itself, not from the person doing the work. LFW will say plainly how old it is and submit anyway. A buyer can waive a requirement; a bid that was never sent cannot win.
Registered and joined
On Monday LFW.com LLC became active in SAM.gov, the federal government's vendor registration system. Federal agencies can now award to LFW directly.
It matters locally too. A housing authority, a transit agency or any program spending federal money has to check SAM before it awards, because that is where exclusions are recorded, and their forms ask for the registration number. Two of the nine proposals in the queue are with agencies spending federal money.
The same day LFW joined the Arlington Chamber of Commerce. The member listing went up the next morning.
On Tuesday it joined ASAE, the association for association professionals, as an Industry Partner, with a listing in ASAE's Solutions HQ. Associations are one of the groups LFW builds for, and that is where their staff gather.
Both memberships are now listed on the About page.
On Thursday I went to the Chamber's orientation for new members, Chamber 101.
It was also my birthday. There was no cake, but the orientation was worth it.
Pumpkin spice at WeWork
On Thursday morning the WeWork in Rosslyn dressed the ninth-floor common area for fall. The announcement promised "the ultimate fall aesthetic" and "the lively team of sweet cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and clove."
In practice: cider, pumpkin muffins, bagels, small pumpkins on an orange runner, and a sign asking for a Google review. That is the table at the top of this post. I had a pumpkin muffin, a bagel and a cup of cider.
The shirt
The WeWork team also left me a birthday gift bag this week, with a shirt in it that says Do What You Love. Very thoughtful. I wore it Friday, and I highly recommend WeWork Rosslyn.
WordPress Accessibility Day is next week
WordPress Accessibility Day starts Wednesday, October 7, at 11 a.m. Eastern and runs for 24 hours: talks for designers, developers, content editors and project managers on building WordPress sites everyone can use.
It is free, online, and the replays stay up through October 31. Register here.
LFW signed on as a sponsor on September 22, two weeks ago, and is on the sponsors page. A small thing to be proud of in week three.
The organizers asked everyone attending to spread the word, so: consider it spread.
What changed on LFW.com
198 commits this week. Three changes worth a closer look.
Monitor now reads your PDFs
Monitor scans a website every night for broken links, slow pages and accessibility regressions.
As of Friday it also opens every linked PDF and checks the three things a screen reader needs first: a tag structure, a document language and a title.
PDFs are the largest accessibility exposure most public websites have, and the Department of Justice's Title II rule covers them.
A document that fails now gets its own section in the monthly report, so the person who uploaded it can fix it at the source.
A free plugin: LFW PDF Check
The same check now runs inside WordPress, at upload. LFW PDF Check flags a PDF that is missing tags, a language or a title the moment it lands in the Media Library.
That is the moment the person still has the source file open, which is when the fix is cheap.
It is free, open source under the same license as WordPress, sends the file nowhere, and does not need an LFW account.
It is the first of several small plugins LFW will publish rather than keep.
Fewer false alarms
Monitor used to report a few things as broken that were not: share buttons, links to Facebook and LinkedIn that answer a bot with an error, and redirects that were put there on purpose.
It no longer does. A finding should mean someone has to do something.
Next week
Four proposals are due, WordPress Accessibility Day is Wednesday and Thursday, and the Missouri proposal goes out.
If you know an organization whose website has nobody looking after it, I would be grateful for the introduction.
Leland Fiegel