brucelawson

brucelawson, 2 months ago to random

I'm at an EU workshop for Apple to discuss and justify its DMA compliance plans. They've been forced into 3 huge u-turns by EU (killing PWAs, removing Epic Games' developer licenses, sideloading) so I'm interested to see their demeanour. Will it be humility, or the usual 'fuck you, we're Apple'? There are people from EU companies that Apple blithely planned to bankrupt by sneakily removing PWAs here. And regulators have human feelings too; no-one like "fuck you". I'll be here all day (try the baguettes!)

brucelawson, 10 months ago to random

People often* ask me if I have a handy infographic explaining the difference between UI and UX.I don't, but I asked AI to generate one. Thanks, Adobe Firefly's response to the prompt "Infographic explaining the difference between UI and UX".

(* never)

brucelawson, 5 months ago to random

Stop making fun of older kids who still believe in Santa Claus, there are grown men who still believe in trickle down housing and that market can solve the housing crisis.

brucelawson, 6 months ago to random

I'm loving the discussion of accessibility features in the new Navigation API (that replaces the History API). This should ameliorate many of the woes that Single Page Apps cause screen reader users. https://github.com/WICG/navigation-api#accessibility-technology-announcements

brucelawson, 3 months ago to random

Is Apple breaking PWAs out of malicious compliance? https://brucelawson.co.uk/2024/apple-breaking-pwas-out-of-malicious-compliance/ #appleBrowserBan

brucelawson, 10 months ago to random

Accessibility widgets are not reducing lawsuits. "The number of lawsuits against companies using accessibility widgets increased slightly in 2023. We found 414 suits this year, compared to 336 in the first half of 2022 and 316 in the first half of 2021. This trend suggests that accessibility widgets may not provide sufficient protection against litigation." https://blog.usablenet.com/web-and-app-ada-lawsuits-6-trends-so-far-in-2023

brucelawson, 8 months ago to random

I've just demoed a new exciting way of developing web, to some managers. I call it "GAFAP", which stands for "Giving A Fuck About People": so using HTML, CSS, modern standards to build in accessibility and reduce JS. I sent this quote from @slightlyoff in the post-demo show-notes: "It is not an exaggeration to say that modern frontend is so enamoured of post-scarcity fairy tales that it is mortgaging the web's future for another night drinking at the JavaScript party." https://infrequently.org/2022/12/performance-baseline-2023/

brucelawson, 2 months ago to random

Attention! J'ai translated notre lettre ouvert pour Monsieur Tim le Chef (le head honcho du Apple) into Francais. Je cordially invite tous mes amis Francais (et aussi, tous mes enemies Francais) inscriber leurs noms, s'il vous plaits! Il est ici: https://letter.open-web-advocacy.org/fr/

brucelawson, 9 months ago to random

"Don't disable paste in forms, you colossal thundertwat!" says Adam Silver https://adamsilver.io/blog/the-problem-with-disabling-paste-and-what-to-do-instead/

brucelawson, 8 months ago to random

"Russian officers who hadn't been paid by Moscow sold key intel on the Black Sea Fleet to Ukrainian resistance fighters. Then the headquarters blew up." https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-officers-sold-black-sea-fleet-intel-ukrainian-fighters-report-2023-9

brucelawson, 2 days ago to random

My son went to a really lovely school for kids with learning difficulties. They cut the school day by 30 mins (so 2.5 hours a week) because they couldn't afford to pay for teaching assistants. Fuck these Tories.

brucelawson, 1 month ago to random

I was asked by my boss to evaluate a couple of hosted content editors. One never answered my Qs about their accessibility. @cloudcannon asked me to speak to their team and explain some of the gaps, and they've really run with it. So this blog post about their efforts to up their accessibility really cheered my wizened shrivelled remnants of a heart. https://cloudcannon.com/blog/how-we-build-cloudcannon-for-accessibility/

brucelawson, 1 year ago to random

brucelawson, 10 months ago to random

The Japanese digital competition regulator proposes an end to the #appleBrowserBan: "Platform operators that provide OS of a certain size or larger shall be prohibited from requiring app developers to use OS providers’ own browser engines" https://brucelawson.co.uk/2023/japans-report-on-mobile-ecosystems-is-published/

brucelawson, 8 months ago to random

"HTML5 introduced a whole bunch of elements nav, main, header, footer, aside and such. And from a screen reader user point of view these were one of the most amazing strides forward I can remember coming across." - @tink. So fucking USE THEM instead of <div>. (Last bit is my gloss on that) https://f-word.dev/episodes/19/

brucelawson, 7 months ago to random

They say you get more right wing as you get older. Over lunch, my 78 year old mum is telling me that in the elections for the National Trust board, she intends to vote against all the fash candidates, and for the gay and Asian candidates to ensure greater diversity.

brucelawson, 1 year ago to random

The bloke next door recently set up as a yodelling teacher. He's had so many students, he's had to put a sign up saying "Please form an orderly orderly orderly queue."

brucelawson, 6 months ago to random

Whole bloody day spent fighting abstractions (some Tailwind vue UI library full of over-engineered ARIA and under-engineered <divs>) and misc. 3rd party libs, so they excrete accessible HTML that would have taken 10 mins to type into an editor. Fucking nonsense.

brucelawson, 2 months ago to random

Who's got a really good example of a form with accessible validation & error messages? I want to show a colleague how to assess forms with a screen reader and examples of good are much harder to find than examples of crap.

brucelawson, 8 months ago to random

A screen reader user’s weird tricks to make accessible websites. Number four will shock you! https://brucelawson.co.uk/2023/a-screen-reader-users-weird-tricks-to-make-accessible-websites-number-four-will-shock-you/

brucelawson, 1 year ago to random

Yesterday I got two rude, peremptory rejection letters from acronym-named Big Corps, about 9 seconds after braving their confusingly-implemented 3rd party application processes. Then I remembered that I hate acronymy corporate jobs anyway. So, if you need someone on a short or medium-term) basis to help educate your team in accessibility, or evaluate your project, give me a yell. Mates' Rates if you're actively trying to make the world better rather than merely maximise shareholder value.

brucelawson, 3 months ago to random

I predicted malicious compliance. But "we can make a Vision Pro but we can't make web apps secure in 2 years and will nobody think of the children? And the PUPPIES?!?!?" is god-tier corporate punch-fisting of developers. Hats off to Cupertino for their chutzpah.

brucelawson, 2 months ago to random

What with collapsing bridges and ISIS and Gaza and Ukraine, I worried you might have missed this important story https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-68656787

brucelawson, 2 months ago to random

EU opens DMA investigations of Apple, Meta, Google https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/eu-opens-dma-investigations/ I wote a thing, with videos of Apple's total evasion and what seemed to me to be disdain bordering on contempt for the developers who had assembled for their DMA compliance workshop at EU last week.

brucelawson, 2 days ago to random

I had filed Sunak as fundamentally decent, but occasionally mouthfarting nonsense to appease the brexitty loons. I didn't expect full fat fascism. Fuck this gang. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpddxy9r4mdo