Dispatches From The Internets

I gave this speech as the closing keynote at A11yQC, a conference on Web accessibility, on 14 October 2014 in Québec City, Canada. I have published my script here as the slides can’t really convey its message on their own. We, as an industry, tend to have a pretty myopic view of experience. Those of us who work day-to-day in accessibility probably have a broader perspective than most, but I would argue that even we all fall short now and again when it comes to seeing the Web as others do.

Last night, while we were enjoying a cool evening and a few drinks outside after day 1 of BDConf, Jeremy asked me for some clarification on the ARIA attributes I had demoed as part of my forms presentation earlier in the afternoon. In particular, he was confused by how aria-labelledby and aria-describedby differ.

I’ll level with you: I used to think I wanted variables in CSS. As a programmer, I love the idea of being able to abstract reusable bits like colors, border widths, font sizes, and the like to obviously named variables. It’s a far more DRY approach and makes maintenance far easier.

In case you missed it, yesterday Pierre Far updated Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. In his post, Pierre lays out their case for progressive enhancement:
> Just like modern browsers, our rendering engine might not support all of the technologies a page uses. Make sure your web design adheres to the principles of progressive enhancement as this helps our systems (and a wider range of browsers) see usable content and basic functionality when certain web design features are not yet supported.

I’m incredibly excited to see that Jason Pamental’s fantastic Responsive Typography is finally available. I had the great pleasure of reviewing an early galley and I can honestly say that it’s a book well worth reading. Jason’s natural and friendly style makes for an easy read and it’s chock-full of actionable recommendations and tips you’ll want to start using right away.

Earlier today, Stuart Langridge—who I worked with on WaSP’s DOM Scripting Task Force and have the utmost respect for—published a blog response to my last post. In it, he made some good points I wanted to highlight, but he also misunderstood one thing I said and managed to avoid addressing the core of my argument. As comments aren’t enabled on his site, I thought I’d respond here.

Yesterday at BlendConf, Scott Hanselman gave a fantastically-entertaining keynote entitled “JavaScript, The Cloud, and the rise of the New Virtual Machine.” In it, he chronicled all of the ways Web development and deployment has changed—for the better—over the years. He also boldly declared that JavaScript is now, effectively, a virtual machine in the browser.

Ars Technica revealed today that Comcast is injecting self-promotional advertising into web pages delivered via it’s Wi-Fi hotspots:

A Comcast spokesman told Ars the program began months ago. One facet of it is designed to alert consumers that they are connected to Comcast’s Xfinity service. Other ads remind Web surfers to download Xfinity apps, Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas told Ars in telephone interviews.