Thomas Steiner
Hiding:
- Hiding content for everyone, using a screen reader or not
- Hiding content for screen readers while showing it to other users
- Showing additional content for screen readers while hiding it from other users
- Hiding content at specific sizes
https://cloudfour.com/thinks/see-no-evil-hidden-content-and-accessibility/
Daniel Appelquist
New WebAPK-based PWAs (in Samsung Internet and Chrome) are a total game changer for seamless web app usability. For example: the way alerts are displayed, the ability to open URLs 'in the app', the way it shows up in the OS. I've been so impressed.
Nolan
@zack Unfortunately I can't seem to find the original objection. It may have been an internal email.
Here is a more recent opinion from Microsoft, though: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/276#issuecomment-434717906
Nolan
Accessibility choices I made that I'm a bit unsure about:
- I used regions instead of headings because we can't know where emoji-mart is hosted on the page, so can't assume h1 vs h2 etc. I'm worried I added too many regions though.
- The skin tone picker is weird: it's a button that invokes a dropdown menu that contains itself… I did what I could using role=menulist and aria-haspopup but without changing the DOM structure. Tested in NVDA and VoiceOver and seems mostly okay. #a11y
Nolan
I'm testing a new version of emoji-mart on https://dev.pinafore.social. If all goes well, we'll release it to npm and merge into Mastodon as well.
The most radical change is a ton of accessibility fixes. If any #a11y advocates would like to take a look, I'd appreciate it. 🙂 It's not perfect, but it's an improvement over the old version (which was just divs and spans). Thanks!
Nolan
@zack This was previously called layered APIs, and permafills before that. Microsoft was against it but provided a lot of feedback and I don't know their position anymore. I recall Yehuda Katz was skeptical on the grounds that it unfairly advantaged one JS library/framework over others. I don't know Mozilla or Apple's position.
Eugen
Spotify to Apple: Time to Play Fair
Nolan
"How an App for Gamers Went Mainstream" by Taylor Lorenz https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/how-discord-went-mainstream-influencers/584671/
It is surprising how fast Discord became the go-to chat app for everything.
Nolan
@leadore @ted @zladuric I'm worried that if I pick up, then I'll go on some list of "yup, there's a human on the other line there"
Nolan
I get so many spam calls that I started ignoring any calls unless I recognize the number. Unfortunately this means I miss a lot of doctor and dentist calls.
I also have a work phone with its own number, and as soon as I got it, it was immediately flooded with robocalls and spam texts. Utter madness.
Nolan
"John Oliver fights robocalls… by robocalling Ajit Pai and the FCC" by Jon Brodkin https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/john-oliver-fights-robocalls-by-robocalling-ajit-pai-and-the-fcc/
This made my day. Robocalls are so annoying.
Eugen
How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 (Not So Easy) Steps
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/technology/how-to-disappear-surveillance-state.html
Ignore the "Bitcoin" in the title, this is pretty interesting
Nate Cull
I love how the word 'wonky' can mean both
'highly complex technical argument able to be grasped only by an ultra-sophisticated intellectual elite'
and
'a tottering structure built on a shaky foundation that one accidental brush with reality will bring crashing down'
Nolan
@bkardell Congrats!
Tek dba Tek
Nginx, we hardly knew ye.
Nolan
@Gargron I mean technically only "hampster" is canon
Nolan
Probably if I had a real community of flesh-and-blood humans that I could commiserate with and swap stories with, I'd feel a lot more enthusiastic about my side projects. But as is, I can see my interest starting to slack. There's no substitute for real human connection.
So that's my pitch for why we need a decent tech meetup in Seattle. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. *drops slides on the floor, awkwardly picks them back up*
Nolan
I have yet to really come to terms with my extreme disappointment with the tech industry. Not just with the "techlash," but with many more personal things:
- burning out on being an open-source maintainer
- realizing that the browser industry is brutal and uncompetitive
- noticing how many tech influencers are just seeking out social media validation through Twitter or GitHub
- realizing that the frontend JS community is largely fad-driven rather than evidence-driven
I could go on
Nolan
Maybe there's something to be said for getting a lot of smart people into the room to talk about tech in a fun and accessible and forward-looking way. It helps promote a sense of optimism, that we can pick up these tools and build something grand with them together.
On Mastodon, I think I spend too much time promoting a sense of embattlement, of "aha, here's how to block ads/trackers," or "aha, here's all the awful things <tech company> is doing." I act like we're all under siege.
Nolan
"Can Anyone Live in Full Software Freedom Today? Confessions of Activists Who Try But Fail to Avoid Proprietary Software" by Bradley M. Kuhn and Karen Sandler (FOSDEM 2019 video) https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/full_software_freedom/
Thought-provoking talk. I'm not sure if it gives me relief (that I'm not the only one who struggles with this) or despair (at the impossibility/absurdity of the whole struggle).
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