If you are anything like me, you don’t want your data sold to third parties. You probably run ad blockers. Maybe a VPN. Some governments are trying to help by requiring the site to declare what cookies are used and providing the user to opt out. But the current method of displaying this information tends to have some serious accessibility issues. I have another way of thinking about them I’d like to propose.
Leave a CommentLinks are what make the internet the world wide web. The original idea was that the internet is a set of digital documents. The link allows you to move between them. To make them as effective as they can be, we want to make them clear in what they do. Often though, the simple link doesn’t provide a clear purpose. Let’s look at what it takes to pass 2.4.4 Link Purpose (in Context).
Comments closedYou’ve seen the warnings before TV shows and movies. “This show contains flashing lights.” This warning on visual media also applies web sites and apps. Guideline 2.3.1 addresses this by implementing a requirement that reduces the potential for severe damage. Let’s discuss why.
1 CommentSEO folks, come at me. The overall product card has gotten cluttered with too many calls to action. It’s killing the point of the interface.
Ecommerce sites have a mind-boggling amount of links. Especially if you are a large company selling diverse things. Just to get to the product list, we first navigate through a mega menu. We do this to choose a category on most eCom sites. Then on the category page, we have to deal with a bunch of filters. If we’re lucky they will be in accordions and we can close them to skip.
1 CommentIt was Christmas Day in 2012 that I had my first major incident. You see, for as long as I could remember I suffered from migraines. I recall having to takes days off school when I was a freshman. But they started before that. At this moment in time, I was getting 20+ migraines a month. I had migraines that would last days. I had some last hours. Those were the worst. I’d start to feel better to only have another come on before the end of the day. Along with the migraines would come anxiety, nausea, dizziness, brain fog, aphasia. But that day was different.
1 CommentYou know the feeling. You’ve just spent the last twenty minutes filling out a form on a website. Suddenly, it asks for a specific piece of information. You need to dig for this information. You spend the next 7 minutes digging in your desk, files, computer, until you find it. Flip back to your form, and you are logged out.
If you are lucky, the form will allow you sign back in and continue from there. There’s a good chance you may need to start over. For you it is frustrating and takes time. But what if you can’t complete the form in the time given? Maybe it’s because you can’t answer the questions quickly enough.
1 CommentHopefully those of you working towards EAA are breathing a little easier today. While some of you were pushing last minute updates, I attended my local Pride celebration.
Well organized and attended, it reminded me why I do this work. People from 1-99+. People with visible disabilities. People with disabilities only visible because they made it so by wearing a device to control the disability (hearings aids off, headphones, walkers instead of canes). This wasn’t a celebration of LGBTQ+, this was a celebration of people being people.
1 CommentThis is being posted Monday June 23rd, 2025. On Friday, the 28th, EAA goes into effect. If you haven’t completed your efforts to be completely accessible, I have one piece of advice:
Don’t stop now. Keep working on it.
2 CommentsIf you are old enough, you remember what JavaScript life was like before jQuery. That framework set up some of the functions we depend on in Vanilla JS to do the most basic work. Like event listeners. If you never met jQuery, please stick around as this isn’t framework specific.
1 CommentYesterday Apple unveiled their new design system, Liquid Glass. It is replacing the design we currently see in order to provide more design options to your device. The basic concept of liquid glass is that all UI will look like glass. This includes spectral aberrations, highlights, and shadows. All these elements are presented on a transparent background. The default font color looks adapts based on the background. Lighter backgrounds are supposed to show darker fonts, and dark background shows lighter fonts.They didn’t address what happens if the background has both.
Out of the box, this new design style presents accessibility issues. The contrast will rarely be correct for normal vision users to see, much less low vision users. Users can adjust this easily, and I expect Apple to respond with this as their “compliance” answer.
Am I being aggressive here? I hope not. I believe it is important to call out Apple on this. Apple is aware that the design styles they create will eventually take over design. It happened with the Mac, the iMac translucent back, and iMac swivel head. It also happened with MacBooks, the iPod, and the iPhone. Skeuomorphism is another example. Must I go on?
Unfortunately, Apple is more than a product company. They’re more than a software company. They’ve become a lifestyle company. They shift thinking. They spawn design thieves who make knock off products.
The federal government is taking actions that appear threatening to disabled people. Over the years, Apple, you have been doing a good job as an accessibility leader. We need you on our side now more than ever. Liquid Glass is not what we need in this moment.
Apple has iOS 26.1 in developer beta and some of the concerns about Liquid Glass are being addressed.
See me on LinkedIn or Bluesky if you want to discuss this.
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