Dispatches From The Internets

This is a great peek behind the curtain on LinkedIn Lite, a progressive web app from the LinkedIn India team. I love seeing more companies embracing the web over apps when it makes sense to do so.

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?

❤️

More thoughtful (and actionable) advice about performance budgets. Would that more companies would do this!

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!

I love it when code is consistent. This is a great tutorial on how to use ESLint and Prettier to make sure your (or your team’s) JavaScript always follows a standard convention.

I love this project. It ticks so many boxes for me as it’s all about doing more with less. I love the ways they’ve found to reduce consumption on the server side and throughput to their users as well. So much to unpack!

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!

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.”