We are building toilets with world-class plumbing that people can’t then sit on. And the people who know how to fix the toilets have no clue how to fit a toilet into our plumbing.
Dispatches From The Internets
The web without the web
When Engineers Become Whistle-Blowers
Ralph Nader is absolutely right:
“We need more engineers who embody the three principles of any profession – independence, scholarly pursuits, and commitment to public service. Those are the vital ethical pillars to helping engineers withstand the great pressures to place commercial priorities over their engineering integrity and limit harm to the public.”
I’m Running for the W3C Advisory Board
As many of you know, I’ve been involved in the push for web standards for the better part of two decades. I caught the bug early and have been advocating for their use in pretty much every article, book, talk, and workshop I’ve created. I’ve also had the great pleasure of helping run the Web Standards Project (WaSP), a group whose impact on the web cannot be understated. And so, when a handful of my colleagues reached out to see if I’d consider running for the W3C Advisory Board, I was… well… speechless. What an honor it is to be nominated, especially out of the blue like that! [^1]: Most of the truly impressive and important work was done by the folks who founded the Web Standards Project. I can’t take credit for more than a handful of our activities, but I was honored to have played a bit role in its history.
Why Everyone Is Watching TV with Closed Captioning On These Days
Subtitles are yet another example of an accessibility feature that improves the experience of a much broader audience.
Personally, I started using closed captions when we came home with Oscar. It also me to watch movie & shows while he slept in my arms. Interestingly, I’ve always tuned in dialogue subtitles in video games.
My own, personal, PWA
Progressive Web Apps are often something we think of as building for others, but while I was redoing the Service Worker implementation on this site—to improve performance for you, dear reader—I decided to throw in a little goody for me as well, in the form of the Share Target.
Nothing Fails Like Success
From optimistically conceived origins and message statements about making the world a better place, too many websites and startups have become the leading edge of bias and trauma, especially for marginalized and at-risk groups.
This is an important read.
Policymakers Sound Alarm On “Dark Patterns,” Deceptive Web Design Tricks
The DETOUR Act, introduced by Sens. Mark Warner and Deb Fischer, targets bad actors on the web. I need to read through it fully to get a sense of what covered and/or missing, but that this is happening is, I think, a good thing.
Native image lazy-loading for the web!
I’m incredibly excited that this feature is shipping in Chromium. It was one of my favorite IE features.
Note: I no longer use “native” in this context, but it remains in quoted material.
Introducing my 2019 mentees
Late last year, I opened applications for my 2019 mentorship cohort.. To say I was overwhelmed by the response is a drastic understatement. I got so many awesome applications, that I decided to increase the slots from two to five! In the end, I’m really excited about the folks I’ll be working with this year: Adewale Abati, Olu Niyi-Awosusi, Marcy Sutton, Sara Wegman, and Desirée Zamora García. I’ve been working with all five of them for a few months now and wanted to highlight a bit about who they are and what we are working on.
Angie Turner King invested her energy in others
Chances are you’ve never heard the name Angie Turner King, and that’s because, like so many Black women, she invested her time and energy in other people. In King’s case, students.