A year in review: 2024

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2024 was our first year with three kids, and what a year that was.

Me sitting on a sofa reading a book with my 3 year old daughter to the right and two babies on my lap. Their faces hidden with emojis.

Personal

Life with three kids is different in many ways, but most importantly, it's awesome. I love my little daughters so much, and I enjoy every day with my family. Okay, maybe not every day because when they're all sick at the same time, fuck me, that's exhausting. Generally, we don't get much sleep, but that extra load when they don't sleep all night and need a lot of attention during the day is challenging. October was a tough month…

Anyway, let's focus on the nice things. We traveled to Chioggia (Italy), Grado (Italy), Orašje (Bosnia), Rovinj (Croatia), Krk (Croatia), Hamburg and Berlin (Germany), and Bern (Switzerland). Traveling and vacations with little kids differ from when you're alone, but we still enjoy it. One of the most significant negative changes is that we don't sleep in our van anymore because we all don't fit. We'll need to figure something out for next year.

Our two baby daughters outside in high chairs with tables attached. They're playing with water we've spilled on the tables. You see water squirting in alle directions where they're hitt
ing the table. Faces hidden with cat with heart eye emojis. My partner holding a stroller with my daughter next to her. It's snowing heavily and there's snow everywhere. You can only see my partners face.

Besides that, 2024 wasn't too exciting, and I mean that in a good way.

A Selfie. I'm sweaty but smiling, holding my medal into the camera after the marathon. A Selfie of my partner and I. I'm giving her a kiss on the cheak.

Oh, and I ran a half marathon in Vienna.

Work

Financially, 2024 was a good year. I did a lot of work for the City of Vienna, ran online and offline workshops, audited several sites, and taught in Salzburg and Graz. The projects weren't just lucrative but also interesting. I'm happy and proud that I got to work for ORF and Statista.

I got a new office in February. It's too big for my needs, but the location is phenomenal. It's located in a beautiful pre-WWII residential building, which means large rooms with high ceilings.

I also revived the CSS meetup and organized three events in the first half of the year.

I finalized my book (Web Accessibility Cookbook) in May, which was a lot of work. Not just writing but especially editing. I had several excellent technical reviewers who provided me with great feedback, but implementing all of it was a pain in the ass. Anyway, the book was published in July, and the feedback so far is overwhelmingly fantastic. I was even invited to talk about it in the Accessibility Book Club.

Me holding the web accessibility cookbook and smiling infront of the first package I got from the publisher.

Speaking

Me presenting on stage showing a color font. The slide shows FCK AFD in large type.

I gave talks in Vienna at the TYPO3Camp, in Hamburg at the HHTML meetup, in Bern at the Fachtagung e-accessibility, and in Berlin at Beyond Tellerrand. I took my entire family to Hamburg, Berlin, and Bern. It was a lot of driving and waking up early, but it was wonderful to share that experience with my partner and my kids.

Here's a recording of my talk in Berlin:

Articles

I didn't blog much. I only wrote seven blog posts, but that's okay because I've reduced my hours to spend more time with my family. Since the workload was so big in 2024, there wasn't much time for extra stuff.

There's a new side project I started, though. I react to the accessibility of more or less randomly picked websites on YouTube. For the first couple of videos, I picked the websites of political parties in Austria because there were elections last year. Before you get too excited, It's in German. I feel more comfortable recording live reactions to websites I have never seen in my native language. However, I may try it in English if there's demand.

All in all, 2024 was great, and I'm looking forward to 2025.