Flatiron Phase-3: Ruby and Finding my Voice
Tags: ruby, accesibility, beginners, api
Published: 2022-11-17 21:29:14

Here I am! I've made it all the way to the end of Phase 3 at Flatiron. During this phase we took a detour from Frontend development to Backend. 

At first the entire prospect was a bit daunting to me. I was learning a new language and I wasn't going to see my progress show up directly in my browser anymore. 

I quickly found that I actually enjoyed ruby and found that it made quite a lot of sense. I also found doing certain tasks with ruby so much simpler and a lot of the built in functionality was a breath of fresh air.

I found a few obstacles here and there, but that was mostly my habit of making things much more complicated than they needed to be.

I have learned a lot this phase! But, in my opinion, the best thing that I have learned, is that I have a passion. And by that I mean, I have found my voice/identity.

I have been wondering since the beginning, where I would find my special niche or if I even had one. What, despite my skills, would make me stand out? 

Over the last few years I have noticed accessibility becoming more important when building an application. While it's more important, it is still a poorly researched and often forgotten, or at least left as a last minute add on.

As a disabled person, I have found the lack of care put into accessibility to be frustrating. There is this idea placed upon every disabled individual that we should try to live our lives as normally as possible, that we shouldn't let our disability "hold us back". 

Unfortunately, for most of us, the very nature of our disability does, in fact, hold us back. However, with more accessible features and applications, our lives do become easier, but that is only if the applications are available and done well.

I want to be a voice for accessibility and inclusion. I want to make the uphill battle that those with disabilities face, just a little smaller.

It all begins with my current application. My phase 3 project. Hermes.

The name Hermes was chosen because he is the messenger of the gods and my app is meant to be used to make those who are nonverbal, semi-verbal, hard-of-hearing, or deaf have an easier time communicating. 

Sign language does already exist, but the percentage of the regular public who aren't disabled and who don't communicate regularly with those unable to speak are very small. 

There are also several apps created for this purpose already, but as someone who has had to use them, I can tell you that the best ones are incredibly expensive and the others are either made for children or abandoned. Sometimes both.

The app comes with a litany of pre-made phrases underneath categories (greetings, common, deaf, nonverbal, etc) as well as an option to add certain phrases to your favorites for quick usage. Eventually, I look to add a text-to-speech feature as well as an input to add your own remade phrases. 

I also would love to have the appearance of the application customizable eventually, with the ability to change the color and icons for the phrases.

I built the api with ruby, using Sinatra and the frontend using React.

It's still in the beginning phases now and is hardly something to write home about, but I know with the coming phases perfect the appearance as well as the functionality.

I am proud to have found something important to me in this phase and, as much as I have enjoyed learning ruby, I think it is probably the best thing to have come out of it.