I’m Douglas Alan Schepers (”Alan” to most of my friends, “Doug” to my family and business contacts, and “shepazu” to a lot of geeks on IRC). I’m a programmer and standards guy (at least that’s what my business card says… I’ve done a lot of other stuff in the past). I studied Computer Programming and Linguistics in college.

I’m a Web application developer with a passion for open Web standards, especially SVG and accessibility (and accessible graphics!).  Over the past decade, I’ve worked in various startups, and helped run a small consulting company, Vectoreal, specializing in SVG Web apps.  I’ve been involved in W3C activities for a while (heavily into Scalable Vector Graphics, and active participation in the SVG, WebAPI, WebApp Formats, and HTML Working Groups).  I was part of the W3C Team from June 2007 to December 2016, where my mission was making it easier for people to make rich Web content.  I edited specs, created and administered tests, chaired and participated in teleconferences, read lots of technical and semi-technical stuff (specs, email, blogs, IRC logs), and tried to find time to still code. In January 2017, I left W3C to pursue my passion for accessible data visualization.

This blog will most likely contain my views on Web technology, politics, and miscellany, as well as code samples and pointers to cool links. You know… blog stuff. Obviously, everything on my blog is my own opinion, not that of any organization I’m affiliated with… trust me, I don’t need to borrow opinions from anyone else, I have opinions about things I’ve never even heard of yet.

I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA with my beautiful wife in our beautiful house, with our 3 cats.  For most social media and IRC, I go by the nickname “shepazu” (the Japanese transcription of my surname, pronounced “ʃepaz” or, more humorously “shepazoo”).  You can contact me at “doug at schepers.cc”.