September 25, 2021

🧶 ICYMI #22: September 25, 2021

Howdy y’all,

A day late on this one, wasn’t feeling my best yesterday.

✏️ Writes

• How to be a Better Learner (Megan Sullivan) - A rundown on how we learn, and specific tactics to be a better learner. I took some useful tidbits from this. Time to dust off my Anki decks.
• Grainy Gradients (Jimmy Chion) - Create “grainy” looking gradients with CSS using an SVG turbulence filter and different blend modes.
• ARIA Spec for the Uninitiated (Gerard Cohen) - This three part series (the link is the first part) issues some “here be dragons” warnings around using ARIA (and when to use it), gives an intro to the ARIA standard and ARIA authoring practices, and concludes with a practical example tying it all together.

🎤 Talks

• How Sighted and Blind Web Navigation Differs (Michele Williams) - In this talk for A11yTalks, Michele discusses the difference in page exploration strategies: “a sighted person takes in a page at a glance and homes in on what they want to explore (a “whole-to-part” approach), whereas someone blind reverses the process and pieces together bits of information to create the full picture (a “part-to-whole” approach)”. She uses a specific example to demonstrate how changing thinking around interface design, markup and headings can better support the more linear “part-to-whole” approach.
• Accessible SVG Masterclass (Carie Fisher) - In this talk for Inclusive Design 24, Carie Fisher discusses patterns, techniques, and considerations for developing accessible SVGs.
• Annotating designs for Accessibility (Claire Webber and Sarah Pulis) - In this talk, also for Inclusive Design 24, Claire and Sarah discuss annotating designs with accessibility considerations as a way to focus on accessibility in the design phase, and more effectively communicate accessibility requirements to other team members, like developers and testers.

🗓 Events

• Jamstack Conf (October 6-7, virtual, free) - Jamstack Conf 2021 is just around the corner. If you have an interest in Jamstack, there’s probably an event or two of interest in there for you! (And if you’re a fan of the “Learn with Jason” livestream, there will actually be a whole track for that this year).
• Web Directions “Access All Areas” (October 29 & November 5, virtual, paid) - I’ve shared this one before as well, but it’s also coming up soon – Access All Areas (AAA) is aimed at keeping front end professionals up to date with developments in accessibility technologies and practices.

🔨 Projects & Courses

• Arrays in JS (Jonathan Speek) - Jonathan relaunched his “Arrays in JS” course for free recently. The course is an interactive and practical deep dive into array methods.

💬 Tweets

🌵 Personal

• Ever since the pandemic began, I, like a lot of other people, have struggled with a changing perception of the passage of time. I came across this post last week, “when will my concept of “linear time” come back from the war?”. This post was ✨ relatable ✨ but also interesting to read about existing studies around the effect on perception of time passage in the absence of stimuli like natural light. According to the post, researchers have since found that researchers have since discovered this is the pattern most people fall into without external input is “a 48 hour rhythm, staying awake for 36 hours and then asleep for 12.” Wild.
• September is National Preparedness Month, apparently. As we start to have the tiniest bits of crisp weather sneaking through in Texas, we’ve been shoring up our emergency prep. Definitely a whole new level of anxiety after February’s historic winter storm and blackout here in Texas. Wherever you are, I hope you take a moment to think about your state of preparedness for situations you may encounter.

Have a good weekend (or rather, hope you’re already having a good weekend),

Amberley