The Best Of The Internets

Unbuttoning Buttons

This is a deep dive into how to un-style a button. In other words, how to make a button look like a link. It isn’t something you’d want to do all the time, but it does have its usefulness in select situations.

Thanks for putting this together Scott!



All Technology is Assistive

There is so much to love about this piece, especially this bit:

Honestly — what technology are you using that’s not assistive? Your smartphone? Your eyeglasses? Headphones? And those three examples alone are assisting you in multiple registers: They’re enabling or augmenting a sensory experience, say, or providing navigational information. But they’re also allowing you to decide whether to be available for approach in public, or not; to check out or in on a conversation or meeting in a bunch of subtle ways; to identify, by your choice of brand or look, with one culture group and not another.

Making a persistent, overt distinction about “assistive tech” embodies the second-tier do-gooderism and banality that still dominate design work targeted toward “special needs.” “Assistive technology” implies a separate species of tools designed exclusively for those people with a rather narrow set of diagnostic “impairments” — impairments, in other words, that have been culturally designated as needing special attention, as being particularly, grossly abnormal. But are you sure your phone isn’t a crutch, as it were, for a whole lot of unexamined needs?

❤️



The dialog element

I’m super-intrigued by being able to render and control modal dialog boxes in a standardized and accessible way. Here’s to the future!





Writing good text alternatives

Amy Leak offers a straightforward comparison of alt text and captions, including some excellent examples of when and how to use each. There’s so much great advice in this article, I won’t take up any more of your time. Go read it!


A Crisis of Permissions

More great thoughts on privacy and permissions from Jo Franchetti. I love her list of suggested improvements at the end. Especially “Encourage/standardise clearer wording and UI to explain reasons for permissions and how long permissions will be granted.”