About Ryan Hearn

I write about the gap between what a document promises and what it actually does.

That sounds narrow. It isn’t. It covers contracts and terms of service, which is what law school left me with. It covers software and websites, which make the same kind of promise and break it in the same kind of way. And it covers insurance, which is my profession — though most of that writing lives on my other sites rather than here.

How I got here

I went to law school under the impression that I wanted to be a lawyer. Law school corrected the impression. What it did not correct was an interest in fine print — in definitions, in exclusions, and in the specific satisfaction of understanding what you actually signed.

That interest found a better home in insurance. I’ve been a licensed California producer since 2016, across life, accident and health, property and casualty. Done properly the job is reading the policy so the client doesn’t have to, and then saying in plain language what it does and does not do. I’ve never found that boring, which I accept makes me unusual.

I live on California’s Central Coast. I’m a UCSB graduate. Go Gauchos.

The screen reader

A few years ago I lost most of my vision. I do all of my reading, writing and work through a screen reader now.

I mention it because it changed what I’m able to notice, not because it’s the subject. A screen reader is a blunt and honest instrument. It reads a page in the order the page was actually built rather than the order it appears to be arranged in, and it will not politely skip past a button that nobody bothered to label. Run it across a checkout page, or a form standing between you and something you need, and you learn something quite specific about how much that company cared, and about who they assumed would be using it.

That is the same finding I go looking for in a policy document, reached from a different direction. So blindness turns up here regularly, as a lens. It isn’t the whole story, and I’d rather not write the version where it is.

What you’ll find here

Long pieces, published when they’re finished rather than on a schedule.

Contracts and the law, read closely — what a document actually says, as opposed to what the summary claims it says. Accessibility, reported rather than argued about: what happens when you actually try to use the thing. Tools, and how to run your own, because I got tired of putting my writing somewhere I did not own. And occasionally something that fits none of those, because this is a personal site and I reserve the right.

The things I’ve built are listed on the portfolio page. Neither of them makes me money, and neither does this site — nothing here is sponsored and there are no affiliate links.

If something here lands with you, I’d like to hear about it. I read everything that comes in.

The fine print, obviously

Nothing on this site is legal or financial advice. I’m aware of how that reads coming from someone who went to law school, but a blog is not a consultation and you deserve the reminder. For advice about your own situation, talk to a professional.