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Hi!
I’ve always aspired to collect best practices. But I never did, not in any organized manner anyway.

The idea wanted to flesh itself out when I ran into a bio of Brian Jordan Alvarez, which was, in many ways, like any other short bio of its kind. It was giving you the kind of information you would find on most short bios. It was written in the third person, like many bios of its kind. But then it ended, unexpectedly, with the statement “He loves you.” That tiny pirate love letter hit me warm and fuzzy from out of nowhere. So unexpected and beautiful, it made my day. I thought to myself this is a great example of a "best practice". I should put this in my imaginary sack of good practices. I should think about practicing it myself in my bios.

I immediately shared it with my bff who raised a formidable challenge. She said, well what if someone you don’t love comes across this. I tried to claim that there is not a single person in the world I do not love. She proceeded to deflate that argument by providing me with specific examples of particularly egregious and heinous people whom I would indeed have a hard time loving.

However, this merely reveals the utopic dimension of BJA’s lovely gesture. Is it possible to love everyone? Queers spin utopias as we breathe. I love us. I love you BJA. And I love YOU, reader. Sure, this message might be seen by an insufferable ass who needs to be convicted of assholism. But it might also be seen by a young queer stranded in a desert of heteronormativity.

So anyway, that tiny utopia spinned by BJA which is generating endless love somewhere on the internet, gave me the inspiration to start this thing. It is now a new profession of mine. I am now, in addition to being a cat pillow and a phd student, also, a collector of best practices.

I am especially excited to hear about access intimacy and gender euphoria sort of best practices. But it can be anything from turn-off-sound-when-not-talking-on-Zoom to random kindness of/towards strangers. I don’t want to limit best practices. So here we go. I will try to share best practices as I come across them and/or remember them. I would love to hear from you too. Because I love you.

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There are many definitions out there. It is something like the best and most optimal way of going about something, developed over years via collective thought and labour, and perhaps also institutionalized, professionalized, and normalized. My understanding of a best practice is the most optimal and efficient way of accomplishing something while also satisfying the needs of all involved such that when the activity is over or the job done, everyone feels like they just experienced the best hug of their lives.

Despite the superlative, I think best practices are best thought of as works in progress. Best practices are emergent and emerging.

What makes something a best practice for me is often what also makes something radically inclusive and intersectional. For instance, The Queer Futures Collective's wonderful handout on learning and respecting someone's pronouns, is a great example of this. (Mine are they/them. Thanks for asking!)

If you have better definitions of best practices comment under this post or click the plus at the end of the column and add your own post!

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What is the best practice for collecting best practices?

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What is the best practice for collecting best practices?

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I'm not sure about this. I am new to Padlet. So far, it looks like a very good platform for collaborations. It is easy to navigate. Not sure exactly how accessible. A best practice for collecting best practices  will hopefully emerge along the way.

In addition to putting up notes on Padlet, I will also see if I can assemble each best practice into a Googledoc file as well. For instance, let's say I wrote a little best practice about image descriptions and then you came and added something else under that heading. I will put those together in a Googledoc so it becomes its own thing. I will also make a separate column with only headings and Googledoc links.
Does that make sense?
Let me know. Click add comment to add a comment or click on the plus sign below the post and add your own post.

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1. Go to the next column to the right of this column which is titled LET'S GO! ADD YOUR PRACTICE!
2. Click on the plus sign after the last post to add your own post.
3. You don't have to be signed up or anything, you can add anonymously.

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Just click on comment at the end of any post and start typing. You don't have to log in for this either.

Now there ARE best practices for commenting :D I might add them to the next column sometime soon.

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This one might already be familiar to you. But I want to start off with this so I can build on it for the next one.
You might be familiar with image descriptions, IDs, or alt-text which we use to describe the images we use on a social media post, blog post, webpage or other media. IDs are usually put in square brackets at the end of a post. Nowadays you can add your ID as alt-text directly to the html code of the website. While they are also recommended for SEO purposes, IDs, at least in my utopian understanding of best practices, are mainly for accessibility purposes, especially for the blind and low-vision community. But I think it goes beyond that. For example, I am an avid Image Description Reader. Primarily because I want to get better at my own image descriptions. But also because I am absolutely fascinated by what people decide to describe about an image. I almost always learn something about the motivation of the person for choosing that particular image. Finally, there is ALWAYS something I miss that the ID picks out. So IDs can be for people with divergent attention patterns and cognitive styles as well. You make something accessible and it always ends up benefiting people outside the target community. Because access is art, bb. Access is love. Access is life.
Here are a couple best practices for image descriptions:
1) Don't rely on automatically generated alt-texts. Write your own. Here's one best practices guide for that specific bit--although it is not access-oriented. It's a start.
2) Even if you do have alt-text which you have beautifully crafted yourself, still include a manual ID in your posts for people who might not have the technical specs or screen-reading technology on their operating system for reading alt-text.
3) You can include something in your ID that goes beyond just a dry description. Flourishes make us flourish. The excess pushes beyond access so that your description becomes more than patronizing accomodation but a part and parcel of the original content as another way of expressing and translating it.
What are your best practices for image descriptions? Let me know in the comments or as another post.

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Emoji descriptions are an extention of the idea and motivation behind image descriptions. I find them to be a very cute nuance on image descriptions. We tend to overlook the fact that emojis are essentially images and often forget to describe them. I hope both image descriptions and emoji descriptions become default. As with image descriptions, I think emoji descriptions do more work than just describe an image to someone with non-normative optical relation to the vision-centric sighted world. For instance, we might not necessarily understand each emotion referenced by emojis. I thought the crying emoji with tears streaming in columns on two sides was crying-with-laughter until it was pointed out to me that it wasn't. So, I think it is very cool to describe your emojis to drive across exactly what mood you are trying to convey with them. Best Practice: Strike up a square bracket next to your emoji(s) on any post and briefly describe them.

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Think of this column as the FAQ or the contact form on a website. You can ask me other questions by clicking on comment under this or clicking the plus sign under the column and making your own post.

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Every morning I try to make my bed. It's not difficult for many, yet my goodness. Doesn't it make your bedroom look so much cleaner?? There's often the mentioned psychology of making your bed. That when you come home, maybe from a rough day at work, at school, or maybe just an 'off' day, there you will have a beautifully made bed waiting for you, with the sheets neat and the pillows puffed.
Its these little things that don't make the day seem so bad.