There are 60 million people with disabilities in the U.S. There are more than 10 times that number around the globe. Yahoo!’s Accessibility team wants to make sure that every one of these individuals is able to use Yahoo! as their web site of choice. That will only be possible, of course, if every corner of our network is fully accessible.

While we still have work to do toward that end, we did reach a significant milestone when Yahoo! India launched an Accessibility Lab in Bangalore. It is modeled after our Sunnyvale lab, which has demonstrated a variety of assistive technologies to hundreds of Yahoos since it launched in 2008.

Our Accessibility Labs are important tools for engineers who can’t imagine life with a disability. The reality is that not everyone can use a mouse, type on a keyboard, or see the computer screen. We simulate that experience so our developers can learn how to think about users with disabilities during their product development process. We have screen readers to help them understand the experience of a blind user, single switches and onscreen keyboards for physically disabled users, communication devices for kids with speech impairments, etc. More and more Yahoo! products are being designed and developed in our Bangalore office, so it became clear that we needed to enhance our ability to train engineers and designers there.

Also, as a global company, we are keenly aware that commercial screen readers are generally out of reach for most blind people living in developing countries. So we’ve sponsored the non-profit NV Access Foundation, which is working on a free, open-source screen reader. Our support will help them improve web features for NVDA for Windows, making it easier for visually-impaired users around the world to browse the Web – especially when they encounter Web 2.0 technologies. And by making NVDA’s screen reader a better product, we’re also helping all the web developers who use it as their testing tool.

Everybody wins.

Victor Tsaran
Sr. Accessibility Program Manager

Sometimes being friendly pays off! Watch what happens when a purple, talking mailbox shows up on a street corner. The Yahoo! Mailbox surprised New Yorkers on a sunny afternoon in Brooklyn and Manhattan and made a bunch of new friends along the way. Thanks to all my NY friends, it was great talking to you and can’t wait to meet the locals in Chicago. Follow me to find out where I’m off to this summer at facebook.com/yahoomail.

On May 12th Yahoos rolled into work on two wheels to celebrate Bike to Work Day!  We cheered a parade of road bikes, city bikes, mountain bikes, folding bikes, and even cargo bikes.  Bright colors were a popular fashion choice this morning (neon green, anyone?), with a solid showing of lycra jerseys and bike shorts in Yahoo! purple.

Cyclists heading to our Sunnyvale and Santa Clara offices stopped by Yahoo!’s two Energizer Stations, where Yahoo! Green Team volunteers greeted them, applauded their people-powered commutes, and rewarded them with a hearty breakfast spread.  Yahoos rode anywhere from 3 miles to 53 miles to get to work, and we’re proud of all of them!  Everyone was thrilled with the perfect weather, especially our brave first-time bike commuters.

Yahoo cyclists at our Sunnyvale headquarters enjoy showers with clean towels, saunas, toiletries, hair dryers, and irons to stay looking crisp after a ride into work.   Bikes are safely stored in bike lockers or open air racks, and we get monthly “house-calls” from a mobile Bike Doctor.  Yahoos also love to ride during lunch on local roads or on the nearby Bay Trail, and to keep up with the Yahoo Cycling Team’s latest achievements.

Bike to Work Day is a great way to highlight a fun, healthy, and low-impact commute.  And days like this remind us that we are lucky to be headquartered in an area where biking is always a pleasure, and riding with fellow Yahoos can makes the day even better.

With robust coverage including original articles and blogs, photo galleries, videos, and a digital guestbook enabling well-wishers worldwide to offer their advice to the couple, Yahoo! became the place the world turned to for programming surrounding the Royal Wedding.

Audience figures show that Yahoo!’s overall traffic surpassed expectations and broke records, driving more traffic and video streams to its coverage of the wedding than any previous event. Preliminary internal data shows that Yahoo! sites serving Royal Wedding content drove 400 million page views on Friday. Additionally Yahoo! delivered Royal Wedding content at a record-breaking 50,000 requests per second on Friday, seven times the average daily peak of approximately 7,500, and video traffic was 21 percent higher than the previous record. Interest in the Royal Wedding was so high that Yahoo! broke bandwidth records before Kate Middleton even stepped out of the car at Westminster Abbey.

According to Yahoo!’s internal data, Yahoo!’s Royal Wedding site (royalwedding.yahoo.com), hosted on Yahoo! Shine, the leading site for women’s lifestyle content , generated 65 million unique pageviews on April 29 and April 30, with 6.6 million unique visitors the day of the wedding and 8.6 millions unique visitors the day after. Engagement with the site was high, with users spending a total of 112 million minutes over those two days combined.

Yahoo!’s homepage recorded 32 million clicks to Royal Wedding coverage on April 29, a new one-day record for a single news event, and 52 million clicks from April 29 through May 1, a three-day record for a single news event.

Yahoo! Shine as a whole set traffic records on Thursday, April 28, then broke them again on Friday and Saturday, generating 80 million combined pageviews over the two days, with 8.7 million unique visitors on Friday and 9.4 million unique visitors on Saturday. Users spent a total of 141.7 million minutes on Shine over the two days.

Yahoo!’s total Royal Wedding video audience figures eclipsed the previous record – Michael Jackson’s funeral – by 21 percent especially impressive given that this event happened during non-peak hours.

Most clicked stories:

Yahoo!’s original content on the Royal Wedding performed incredibly well, providing users instant access to everything they wanted to know with Yahoo!’s unique voice and interesting analysis. A team of industry-leading writers and editors wrote and featured fascinating stories that really clicked with users on Yahoo!’s homepage. Pippa Middleton, Kate’s younger sister and maid of honor, quickly became the breakout star of the wedding, and led coverage with the top two most-clicked stories. Yahoo!’s top five Royal Wedding stories included:

    All eyes turn to Kate’s sister (6.7 million clicks)
    Kate’s sister wears surprising white dress (6.1 million clicks)
    Who is the frowning girl in the royal kiss photo? (5.3 million clicks)
    Kate debuts stunning evening dress (5.1 million clicks)
    Kate Middleton’s dress wows spectators (4.6 million clicks)

The Royal Wedding Yahoo! Guestbook:
The Royal Wedding Yahoo! Guestbook provided users the opportunity to offer their marital advice and best wishes to Prince William and Kate Middleton, then share those wishes with users’ social networks. The guestbook received more than 300,000 comments from users in 194 countries. The most common advice, across all the regions, centered on three themes: be good to each other, communicate openly and never go to bed angry.

Yahoo! searches during the Royal Wedding:

Audiences have been visiting Yahoo! for daily updates since Prince William and Kate Middleton’s engagement was announced, seeking the most interesting stories or answers to a wide range of questions about all aspects of the Royal Wedding.

On the day of the wedding, amidst all the pomp and circumstance, people turned to Yahoo! for answers to their many questions — including figuring out what “pomp and circumstance” was. Some of the questions people asked on Yahoo! included:

    What does Pippa mean?
    What does Prince William do?
    What is a fascinator?
    What religion is Prince William?
    Did Kate Middleton meet Princess Diana?
    What is a duchess? What is a royal duke?
    Was Diana a commoner?
    Who was invited to the wedding? Who wasn’t invited to the wedding?

The day-of searches on Yahoo! centered mostly around Kate: her shoes, dress, tiara, and the lace on her dress. Interest in Prince Harry and Pippa Middleton also surged on the wedding day. All week leading up to the ceremony, Prince Harry searches on Yahoo! surpassed those of groom Prince William. Aside from the royal wedding party, Yahoo! saw Americans’ interest focus on Sarah Burton, designer of the now-famous wedding gown, the hats worn to the wedding (searches for “royal wedding hats” spiked 4291percent on the day of the wedding), and the ladies sporting the fanciest hats: Princess Beatrice spiked 2333 percent on the day of the wedding and Princess Eugenie spiked 1474 percent.  Hat designer Phillip Treacy spiked as well.

In the days following the wedding, the attention turned from Kate and according to searches on Yahoo!, Pippa Middleton became the star of the show.  Searches on Yahoo! for Pippa were 11 percent higher than for Kate (looking at searches for April 29 and 30th). Searches for “Pippa Middleton” were also significantly higher than “Prince William” and “Prince Harry.” Specifically, people wanted to know about her age, weight and height, and see her dress. Another lady casting a shadow on Princess Kate was Princess Grace — searches for “Princess Grace Wedding Dress” spiked 5680 percent the day of the wedding on Yahoo!, as commentators drew comparisons to Kate’s dress.

As expected, users wanted to see photos. On Yahoo!, searches for “royal wedding pictures” and “royal wedding photos” spiked more than 5263 percent.

Flickr from Yahoo!:

Through The British Monarchy’s official photostream on Flickr from Yahoo!, one of the world’s best places to post and share photos, the royal family has given people across the globe an inside look into the Royal Wedding over the past few months, from wedding invitations, wedding cake designs and the official wedding pictures taken by the happy couple’s photographer. In total, there have been more than 45 million views of the British Monarchy photostream and pictures on Flickr.  The top five photos viewed on The British Monarchy’s official photostream include:

    The official Royal Wedding photographs (The Bride and Groom with attendants) – 1.08 million views
    The official Royal Wedding photographs (The Royal Wedding Group) – 1.07 million views
    The official Royal Wedding photographs (The Bride and Groom) – 810,000 views
    The Royal Wedding Cake – 447,000 views
    The Service (Prince William and Catherine Middleton leaving Westminster Abbey following the ceremony) – 440,000 views

Women In Tech had lunch with three extraordinary Yahoo! leaders: Cheryl Ainoa, Fay Hellal and Yvette Martinez-Rea. Guests enjoyed Portos and some amazing insight.

The speakers answered audience questions such as:

    * “How do you deal with difficult people?”
    * “What are the benefits of having an MBA?”
    * “As a mother, how do you practice work-life balance?”
    * “How do we nurture a woman’s ambition?”

Here’s what our speakers recommended:

    * Know your manager’s, manager’s goals and help your boss to achieve those goal
    * Know your boundaries at home and at work
    * Know your priorities for excellence
    * Manage your guilt, set appropriate expectations
    * Set clear objectives when dealing with difficult people
    * And last, "Redefine difficult." Remember people process information differently

Key Insights on career development:

   1. Create a board of directors for your life compiled of the following types of board members from varied professions: a person two levels higher (mentor level), a peer, and a person two levels lower (mentee)
   2. Think about the expectations placed on your boss
   3. To better understand work politics read the book: It’s All Politics

Dealing with difficult people: There is a difference between a difficult superior and a difficult client or peer.

   1. Peers/clients: Find ways to influence peers towards a common goal-- do not dictate the path.
   2. Bosses: Take a step back and figure out the root issue, then apply that to your next encounter.
   3. Take the Meyers Briggs Test to find out more about personality types: here (the test costs money)

Nurturing Ambition/MBA FAQs

   1. MBA's can be helpful to show the mosaic picture, using other’s experiences in the business world, we can learn a lot.
   2. The more you see the “big picture” the more you will know how you can make an impact.
   3. Give yourself permission to learn.
   4. Learn how to “manage your guilt” as an ambitious person.
   5. Give yourself permission to get less than an “A” on the unimportant parts of life: (Make your time with your kids “A+” time, and time spent on after hour work calls "F")