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Posts about what I read elsewhere. Subscribe with RSS
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Less perfectionism, more humanism
In Branch, Michelle Barker suggests a new mindset for the web:
If “move fast and break things” is Silicon Valley’s rallying cry, then the flip-side is “move slow and mend things”.
(From: The perfect site doesn’t exist - Branch)
She says we should center sustainability in our work on the web, be intentional in content and code, and prioritise being human to being perfectionist. I could not agree more.
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EN 301 549 vs WCAG
Accessibility standards veteran and axe-core product owner Wilco Fiers explains how he sees EN 301 549 relate to WCAG:
EN 301 549 steadily gained importance. It is often dismissed as “WCAG with a different number slapped on it,” but it is far more than that.
(From: 301,549 ways to improve accessibility: EN 301 549 | Deque)
In the post, he explains the EN is broader than WCAG in various ways:
- it has more requirements, like for browser settings to be respected by websites (11.7 User preferences)
- it applies to more than web content (apps, kiosks), a scope WCAG explicitly doesn't support
- it and derivatives of it apply in more and more places, way beyond the EU (Canada, Japan, Australia)
On the authoring tool requirements bit that Wilco mentioned, I wrote a blog post to summarise our group's thoughts: On authoring tools in EN 301 549.
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Screenreader only component
Donny D'Amato on making a design system component for content that is meant for screenreaders:
there has been one concept that I’ve stuggled to put into this component-driven ecosystem; screenreader only as it has traditionally existed as a class (eg., .sr-only) added to an otherwise benign element
(From: Screenreader only)
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Reducing complexity
Tim Paul on how complexity can increase unexpectedly if we automate:
handling complexity isn't the same as reducing it.
In fact, by getting better at handling complexity we're increasing our tolerance for it. And if we become more tolerant of it we're likely to see it grow, not shrink.
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Popover in Baseline
With Firefox 125 shipping the feature, good news on popover:
This web feature is now available in all three major browser engines, and becomes Baseline Newly Available as of April 16, 2024.
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Attributes and properties
Attributes and properties are fundamentally different things.
(From: HTML attributes vs DOM properties - JakeArchibald.com)
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Opening
To convince a reader or conference attendee that your content is something to pay attention to, try opening strong.
I don't think I'm very good at this, so I loved Maggie Appleton's latest piece. It's full of useful advice:
For your writing to be worth reading, you need to be exploring something of consequence for someone. You have to have some kind of problem that matters.
(…)
Once you know you have a consequential problem for a community and some sense of a solution, you get to play with narrative details. This is the fun storytelling part. -
Statistical illusion
Baldur Bjarnason, author of the excellent “The intelligence illusion”, on business risks of Generative AI (recommended!):
Delegating your decision-making, ranking, assessment, strategising, analysis, or any other form of reasoning to a chatbot becomes the functional equivalent to phoning a psychic for advice.
In his post, Baldur warns us once again not to imagine functionality that doesn't exist, he says it's all a ‘statistical illusion’.
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AI, accessibility and fiction
This week, once again, someone suggested that “AI” could replace (paraphrasing) normative guidelines (ref: mailing list post of AGWG, the group that produces WCAG).
Eric Eggert explains why this seems unnecessary:
The simple fact is that we already have all the technology to make wide-spread accessibility a reality. Today. We have guidelines that, while not covering 100% of the disability spectrum, cover a lot of the user needs. User needs that fundamentally do not change.
(From: “AI” won’t solve accessibility · Eric Eggert)
I cannot but disagree with Vanderheiden and Nielsen. They suggest (again, paraphrasing) that we can stop making accessibility requirements, because those somehow “failed” (it didn't, WCAG is successful in many ways) and because generative AI exists.
Of course, I'm happy and cautiously optimistic that there are technological advancement. They can meet user needs well, like how LLMs “effectively made any image on the Web accessible to blind people”, as Léonie Watson describes in her thoughtful comment. If people want to use tools meet their needs, great.
But it seems utterly irresponsible to have innovation reduce websites' legal obligations to provide basic accessibility. Especially while there are many unresolved problems with LLMs, like hallucinations (that some say are inevitable), environmental cost, bias, copyright and social issues (including the working conditions of people categorising stuff).
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What ARIA attributes do
Kitty explains the difference between
disabled
andaria-disabled
:[disabled and the aria-disabled attribute] are both meaningful attributes with their own pros and cons
(From: On disabled and aria-disabled attributes | Kitty Giraudel)
There's a lesson in here that applies more generally: ARIA attributes always merely set ‘accessibility semantics’, they don't have side effects like affecting discoverability. It also means when you use them and want behaviours associated with the attributes, you need to add those yourself. So if you add a button role, it won't behave like a button upon adding that attribute, you need to add click and keyboard handlers (and more) yourself.