Sommer Panage

iOS Engineer | Accessibility Specialist | Manager


An only-partly-selfish argument for Apple Watch to have 'ankle mode'

tech accessibility circus
Today, I posted on Mastodon about how I often do my aerial training with my Apple Watch on my ankle rather than my wrist because it’s dangerous for me to have the watch on my wrist while I work in the air. Of course, this mode of use is not officially supported by Apple, but it works well enough for my purposes. (The Apple Watch, as we all know, is full of sensors, all of which have likely been very specifically calibrated for wrist-only wear. Read more...

Accessibility is for Every One

tech accessibility
Back when I worked at Apple, on the Accessibility Team, we’d often receive bug reports from customers. Sometimes we’d get hundreds of the same one, and sometimes just a few. However, there was a certain class of reports that this story is about. It went something like this, “Hello, I have this specific disability X. It causes these symptoms and issues for me. When I try to do Y in your product, I cannot. Read more...

One Month without Twitter

tech social media
It wouldn’t be a social media “cleanse” if I didn’t write a blog post about it, would it? Jokes aside, a month without social media was a fascinating experience for me…both in how mundane it was and how extraordinary. I’ll start with the mundane. I had more time to do things I liked In news that will shock no one, not being able to doom scroll meant that when I reached for my phone, there was nothing to do. Read more...

Hello New Website!

tech learning
I’ve been wanting to update my website for a long time. Not for any particular reason; the old one was fine and did the job. I just felt the urge to tinker! I’m not much of a web dev. Though my early programming years were spent dabbling in HTML and CSS, that was long forgotten after oscillating between between a chemical engineering major, a music major, and, finally, a psych major. Read more...

One Year Later

circus
One year ago today, I quit my full-time job as a software engineer at Twitter to “run away with the circus.” The idea was that I would give myself one year to get some sort of meaningful work in the circus industry — a tour…a contract at a theme park…a cruise ship gig… It didn’t have to be my dream job, but I wanted to see if I could at least get my foot in the door somewhere. Read more...

Auditioning for Le Rêve in Las Vegas

circus
On April 20, 2015 I auditioned for Le Rêve in Las Vegas as a generalist. Spoiler: I got cut. The foggy, mysterious setting before Le Rêve begins. The internet tends to be a place where we showcase our successes. The photos that make us look good, not the ones where one eye is half-closed and our gut is sticking out. We share our new jobs, our exciting life events and major landmark decisions. Read more...