We lost a seminal figure in the world of web design this week. And I lost a good friend and mentor. Molly Holzschlag cared deeply for the web and those of us who till its soils.
Dispatches From The Internets
Remembering Molly
Please size your inline SVGs
While it is a bit of an edge case, every now and then I’ll hit a site—yes, even a high profile one—and the CSS will fail to load for some reason. When this happens, inevitably every inline SVG resource on the page will grow to fill the entire width of my viewport, making for a really awkward experience.
Design for Developers
One of my favorite web designers, Stephanie Stimac, asked me to write the foreword for her amazing new book, Design for Developers. With her permission, and Manning’s, I’m reprinting it here.
Opportunities for AI in Accessibility
In reading through Joe Dolson’s recent piece on the intersection of AI and accessibility, I absolutely appreciated the skepticism he has for AI in general as well as the ways in which many have been using it. In fact, I am very skeptical of AI myself, despite my role at Microsoft being that of an Accessibility Innovation Strategist helping run the AI for Accessibility grant program. As with any tool, AI can be used in very constructive, inclusive, and accessible ways and it can be used in destructive, exclusive, and harmful ones. And there are a ton of uses somewhere in the mediocre middle as well.
Read-only web apps
I love Jeremy’s proposed compromise on JavaScript in web apps:
Your app should work in a read-only mode without JavaScript.
Assume the Position—A Labelling Story
Interesting examination of label positioning relative to checkboxes and radio controls in forms. While ostensibly web-focused, it applies equally to any GUI.
News from WWDC23: WebKit Features in Safari 17 beta
I’m very excited to see Apple roll out greater support for PWAs (though I’d bet good money on them never using that term publicly) in macOS Safari! I sincerely hope this is the beginning of many good things to come.
What Google Should Really Be Worried About
The old computer programming adage “garbage in, garbage out” is going to ring even more true as search engine crawlers consume more and more empty calories in the form of AI-generated bullshit and misinformation.
The question is why: why do rings of fakes websites like these even exist?
Part of the answer is, of course, money. Fake websites can be used to sell real advertisements.
ShatGPT
This is an excellent post from Steve Faulkner on some of the issues with Large Language Models like ChatGPT, especially when it comes to accessibility. He clearly outlines three key areas where we are failing:
- The base UI is inaccessible (or barely accessible).
- Features are hidden from people using Assistive Technologies.
- Advice they give on making interfaces more accessible do more harm than good.
Considering content warnings in HTML
One of the features I really love about Mastodon is their first-class Content Warning feature. With one additional step, you can add any warning of your choice to your post and it will be hidden by default, showing only the content warning text. It’s a super-simple idea, but so powerful when it comes to reducing potential the likelihood of causing our readers to experience the kinds of trauma that could have severe consequences.