Earlier this month I joined Jeremy Osborne and Andrew Miller to talk about the benefits and harms of AI as it relates to accessibility. It was livestreamed on a few platforms, but I wanted to drop links to the transcript and archival video in case you’re interested.
Dispatches From The Internets
Exploring AI’s Role in Accessibility
Symbol Creator AI
About a year ago, the folks at Global Symbols pitched me on their vision for using image generation models to create new AAC symbols that fit thematically within an existing set. It was a truly compelling use case for generative AI and I was thrilled to fund their project through the AI for Accessibility grant program.
Fast forward to today and their project has launched! Please check it out and share it with any AAC users in your life!
Complaining About Designers Fiddling with Figma Solves Nothing
Michael F. Buckley posted a somewhat imflamatory piece to the UX Collective blog over on Medium and I had some strong reactions to it I wanted to share. You should read it first before continuing.
Speech Accessibility Project data leads to recognition improvements on Microsoft Azure
This is the kind of work that keeps me excited about the potential of AI to meaningfully improve people’s lives. I’m so proud to be playing a small part in this project.
On Diversity
I’ve been broadly working in the DEI (or DEIA if you like) sphere for decades now. Most of my work has been coming at it from the accessibility side of things, but I got really involved in allyship and more traditional DEI work starting in 2019. Seeing the current U.S. administration taking an axe to DEI programs in the government and bully private businesses to do the same has me incredibly frustrated, confused, and (yes) angry. I want more equality and more opportunity in the world, not less. And so, when I was listening to the latest episode of The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, I was struck by how the left and right may actually be more aligned on DEI than the headlines lead us to believe.
Web Components Are Not the Future — They’re the Present
I really appreciated Cory LaViska’s take on #WebComponents here. Especially this bit:
You know what framework I want to use? I want a framework that aligns with the platform, not one that replaces it. I want a framework that values incremental innovation over user lock-in. I want a framework that says it’s OK to break things if it means making the Web a better place for everyone. Yes, that comes at a cost, but almost every good investment does, and I would argue that cost will be less expensive than learning a new framework and rebuilding buttons for the umpteenth time.
A Web Component for Conditional Dependent Fields
A few weeks back I released a web component to enable you to add requirement rules to checkbox groups. Continuing in the form utility space, I’ve created a new web component that allows you to make fields required based on the values of other fields: form-required-if.
Don’t Use JS for That: Moving Features to CSS and HTML by Kilian Valkhof
This is a fantastic run-through of HTML and CSS features that help reduce our dependence on JavaScript (and improve #accessibility). Great work Kilian!
On CrowdStrike, dependencies, and building robust products on the web
I have no opinion on CrowdStrike as a company or service. I’ve never used their products. In fact, prior to the incident last week, I had only a passing familiarity with their name — likely from headlines in the tech press I’d scrolled past at some point in time. I now have a vague understanding of what they do, but that’s only based on what I learned about the cause of the incident. In reflecting on this unfortunate incident, I can’t help but think of the lesson it holds for web designers and developers.
Requirement Rules for Checkboxes
HTML checkboxes debuted as part of HTML 2.0 in 1995. Our ability to mark an individual checkbox as being required became part of the HTML5 spec that published in 2014. A decade later, we can still only make checkboxes required on a case-by-case basis. To overcome this limitation, I had created a jQuery plugin that allowed me to indicate that a user should choose a specific number of items from within a checkbox group. Yesterday I turned that plugin into a web component: form-required-checkboxes.