October 23, 2021

🧶 ICYMI #26: Blaming Screen Readers 🚩×5

Howdy howdy,

Happy weekend, y’all. Hope you’re having a beautiful Saturday. Here are few tidbits I came across this week to take a look at, if they interest you.

✏️ Writes

• Blaming Screen Readers 🚩×5 (Adrian Roselli) - If you haven’t seen it, an emoji-fied meme made the rounds on Twitter recently, consisting of something a person considers a “red flag” with anywhere from one to as many “🚩” emojis as will fit in the rest of the tweet. (The unicode short name for that emoji, by the way, is “triangular flag”. Adrian wrote a great post about browsers, screen readers, and this style of graphical meme.
• Respecting Users’ Motion Preferences (Michelle Barker) - Why there’s no reason not to leverage the prefers-reduced-motion media query to make your sites more accessible.
• Disability: Let’s Say the Word (Emily Ogle) - On the words we use to talk about disability.

🔨 Projects / Courses

• HOCUS :FOCUS An keyboard accessibility horror game (@HTeuMeuLeu) - An interactive (and seasonably appropriate) way to educate on the importance of keyboard focus for accessibility. Beware.
• React Docs (BETA!) - I have been so interested to see the results of the effort to update the React docs 👀. Earlier this week, we got our first peek. The updated docs are released under beta, and as Dan Abramov said, are “written with Hooks first, had interactive examples and challenges, API diagrams, and illustrations.”
• Automating in the Browser Using JavaScript (Alan Richardson) - How to “use the JavaScript console, JavaScript, and query selectors, and understanding the application to automate and interact with applications from the browser itself.”

💬 Tweets

🌵 Personal

• Last week I shared that I have increasingly struggled with focused attention, especially over the last few years, trying different things (like sketch-noting) to keep myself engaged. Discussing with a co-worker this week, he recommended this article about “attention management” from a few years ago. At the same time, I’m seeing a lot (like some of the tweets above) rebuffing productivity culture, and leaning into the enjoyment of the pursuit, whatever that is, and whatever the perceived value of the pursuit is. Maybe when I’m gravitating to what I really want to do, my attention will follow. (I used to read books – a metric ton of books – as a kid! I’ve only finished a handful of books in my adult life. Perhaps because I’m forcing myself to read things of (perceived) productive value, and not for enjoyment – or confusing the two). Of course, we still have to get things done. But I’m gonna try to worry a hell of a lot less about it. The more I struggle, the more structure I attempt to introduce, and my inner 4-year-old is having absolutely none of it.
• And on that note, one of the things I read in high school was The Wheel of Time series (probably about half of it, that is – sore subject). A friend of mine sent this article in our group chat this week: Inside Wheel of Time, Amazon’s Huge Gamble on the Next Game of Thrones. It’s been known for a few years now that this was coming, and every time I hear about it, I’m reminded that I never finished reading the damn series. I’ve attempted to reread it several times with the goal of finally reading to the end. Now, with the impending premiere of the series, the wheel turns and a new attempt begins.

Have a good one,

Amberley