Early this year, I put out the call to anyone who might be interested in a mentorship with me. The response was overwhelming and the decision of who to work with this year was really tough. After a great deal of consideration, however, I chose not one, but two folks I really wanted to work with this year: Amberley Romo and Manuel Matuzović. I’ve been working with the two of them for a few months now and wanted to highlight a bit about who they are and what we are working on.
Dispatches From The Internets
My 2017 Mentees
And now, a brief definition of the web
This is an excellent and well-argued piece from Dieter Bohn. In it, he argues that “the web” is characterized by two things:
- URLs and
- Client agnosticism.
Reading this, I’m reminded of a lot of Jeremy’s writings about products being “on the web” rather than “of the web”. It’s an incredibly important distinction in my mind because, as Dieter so eloquently puts it
The openness of the web allowed small companies to become big ones without seeking permission from the biggest ones. Preserving the web, or more specifically the open principles behind it, means protecting one of the few paths for innovation left in the modern tech world that doesn’t have a giant company acting as a gatekeeper. And there’s reason not to trust those giant companies: there’s much less incentive to encourage openness when you have a massive empire to defend.
These are important things to consider when deciding where to invest your time and energy.
Progressive Web Apps and the Windows Ecosystem
I had the great pleasure of delivering a talk about Microsoft’s strategy towards Progressive Web Apps at Build. You can view the slides or watch the recording of this talk, but what follows is a distillation of my talk, taken from my notes and slides.
The Unbearable Inaccessibility of Slideshows
Carousel’s and slideshows are the red-headed stepchild of the web design world, but they are still used (and useful) in many scenarios. That said, they are often horribly inaccessible. This article offers a step-by-step walkthrough of common accessibility issues with this interface and details how to address them.
Accessibility Checker for CKEditor
Do you use CKEditor? You should really grab the new Accessibility Checker.
PWAs + Desktop = Equity, Opportunity, and Reliability
Next week I’ll be giving a talk on Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) on Windows (and desktop) at Microsoft Build. While researching folks perspectives on PWAs for the desktop, I stumbled on this post from Justin Ribeiro. In it, he makes a solid case for why discussions of PWAs should not be limited to mobile contexts: > As web developers we use the desktop browser different than an average user. We use the desktop to develop and we sometimes fall prey to assumptions about the platform from that experience.
What Non-Disabled People Get Wrong About Accessibility
Yes, yes, and yes!
How to use -ms-high-contrast
An excellent response to Patrick Lauke’s post on High Contrast Mode in Windows. Greg makes seem great points and provides a clear use case using system color keywords.
Does anyone actually use (or even know about) Microsoft’s Edge browser?
Edge usage is growing. NetMarketShare.com puts it above Safari usage on macOS and the U.S. government websites have seen more than 98 million visits in the last 3 months alone. If you’re not testing on Edge you should be.
- PS - You can test on Edge for free over on Browserstack.
Screen readers and web browsers – what’s the best pairing for testing?
This post offers exactly what it says on the tin: 7 screen reader/browser combos you should be using in your testing work.