This piece offers a solid introduction to the Accessible Perceptual Contrast Algorithm (APCA). This algorithm is part of WCAG 3.0 and will replace the contrast algorithm present in WCAG 2.x. It prioritizes perceived contrast and readability.
Here is an excellent testing tool as well: https://www.color-contrast.dev/
I love everything about this piece showcasing how people with disabilities are using open source to empower themselves and others.
GPT-4 is released. Really impressive improvements over GPT-3 and GPT-3.5.
The image description example with the VGA charger is really impressive. It will be really interesting to see how this new LLM can improve accessibility.
If you auto-build with every push, did you know you can tell Netlify to skip building a given commit? Just add “[skip netlify]” to your commit message.
That’s gonna be super useful for something I have planned!
This piece does a great job of relaying the reality of JavaScript failures on the web and makes a strong case for why progressive enhancement is such an important approach. Jason’ illustrations of who is affected by JavaScript failures and how are particularly compelling.
I also love how succinctly he nails this section:
So, if progressive enhancement is no more expensive to create, future-proof, provides us with technical credit, and ensures that our users always receive the best possible experience under any conditions, why has it fallen by the wayside?
Because before, when you clicked on a link, the browser would go white for a moment.
JavaScript frameworks broke the browser to avoid that momentary loss of control. They then had to recreate everything that the browser had provided for free: routing, history, the back button, accessibility features, the ability for search engines to read the page, et cetera iterum ad infinitum. Coming up with solutions to these problems has been the fixation of the JavaScript community for years now, and we do have serviceable solutions for all of these — but all together, they create the incredibly complex ecosystem of modern-day JavaScript that so many JavaScript developers bemoan and lament.
All to avoid having a browser refresh for a moment.
I love it when people share their approaches to progressive enhancement. I don’t know that I would take the same approach, but it was really interesting to read Jason’s rationale and to see the comparisons between his original React project and the progressively enhanced one.
This is an excellent round-up of simple CSS tweaks you can make to improve the legibility of your content. I learned a few things and you will too.
Some of my colleagues at Microsoft have put together a 17-part video learning course on Progressive Web Apps. It’s got a ton of great material if you’re looking to get started.
This is a rather lengthy piece on developer experience from Cole Peters (who works on the Enhance framework). He makes some excellent points, including this one:
I believe ‘good developer experience’ needs to be re-imagined as the enabling of developers to deliver reliable and first rate end user experiences — for as many users as possible, and for as long as possible. With this goal in mind, I think we’d be hard pressed to find a better starting point than the fundamentals of the web platform — that is, web browsers, HTTP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These technologies have existed for decades in a near total state of backwards compatibility, while also consistently evolving to offer web developers ever more powerful techniques to deliver exceptional user experiences.
I enjoyed this overview of options for progressive enhancement and web components in server-rendered websites. Not sure if I’ll ultimately use any of them, but it was interesting to see the different approaches.