Dispatches From The Internets

Sounds like this was an awesome workshop!

George Williams, one of the workshop organizers and author of the chapter “Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities” in Debates in the Digital Humanities (2012), offered the example of the curb cut, which, as he says in his chapter, was designed to facilitate wheelchair users crossing the street, but “became recognized as useful also to other people such as someone making a delivery with a dolly, a traveler pulling luggage on wheels, a parent pushing a child in a stroller, or a person walking beside their bicycle.” Williams urged us to recognize the broad benefits of accessible design, while also raising questions about the “universal” in universal design.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Everyone has special needs and not all of them revolve around disabilities.

There will be another Accessible Futures workshop this Fall. If you have the opportunity, you should go.

Stuart Langridge has been writing smart JavaScript for the last 18 years. We should all be that pragmatic.

Mat Marquis on why you really need to upgrade Picturefill if you’re using it. Really. Like now.

Jeremy Keith’s love letter to the web. Gush!

The web has no gatekeepers. The web has no quality control. The web is a mess. The web is for everyone.

The future of interface is getting pretty interesting.

This is a fantastic presentation on progressive enhancement from the one and only Christian Heilmann. See also: His insightful post comparing progressive enhancement to checking in for a flight.

I could not agree more with PPK on this: Platform-specific apps and websites shouldn’t be in competition. Each has its pros and cons.

If the user doesn’t want your icon on his home screen, if the user wants a just-in-time interaction, it’s the web they want — not because of any inherent technological superiority, but because it’s hassle-free. Go there, read, forget. No junk left on your phone.

Most businesses don’t stand a chance of ending up on the users’ home screens. So they need the web — but not a web that emulates native to no particular purpose.

Note: I no longer use “native” in this context, but it remains in quoted material.

Paul Kotler shares some of his struggles as a technology user with both autism and apraxia, including those you may not have considered:

For me, every step forward in making things lighter and smaller is a new obstacle. Often, the buttons I need to hit are too small, the screen too sensitive, or the glare off the screen too distracting to allow me to make use of my device. Updates to operating systems or apps that create slight changes to the size and position of buttons throw me off for days. While these changes might go unnoticed by a typical user, I endure a relearning process that slows me down and makes it more difficult to communicate.