Hello Friend!

Halfway There!

We’re already at the halfway point of 2021 and it’s hard to believe, but here we are! Hope you, dear reader, are doing well and we can all see the light at the end of this long tunnel we have been in for over a year now.

Hopefully soon, we can be back at conferences and doing in-person events as well as visiting others without worry. We’re getting there! 😷

A few things to get to in this issue, so let’s get into it!

I had plans to publish this newsletter on the first Monday of every month. I’ve since changed that to the 1st of every month to coincide with a lot of the owrk that I am doing and just to be able to cross an item off my list.

Both vaccinations are done, the two week wait is over, I can go places without a mask, but I’ll wait until I know wwe’re out of the woods.

Dad is home now, the neck surgery went great. No problems. He’s relaxing and recovering comfortably after driving my aunt batty for a couple months.

🔊 Twitch. I am going to be streaming again, probably starting in July. It will be an afternoon stream, I had an informal Twitter poll but I will have to push the stream until after my W3C meeting. So a Friday, 1-2pm Eastern time stream looks like it will happen.

📝 One article is headed for publication on CSS-Tricks. It talks about Target Size for WCAG and how designers/developers need to start taking the recommended guidelines into account for accessibility reasons. The other article is still going through the last touches before I send it off to Smashing Magazine for editing.

🗣 My talk at GAAD 2021 went great, had a great time giving it. My talk is the last talk, but I recommend watching the others if you want.

I have released podcast episode five with David Dylan Thomas, author of Design for Cognitive Bias which is an excellent book and if you give the podcast a watch or listen, think about buying David’s book, I highly recommend the read!

You can watch the epsiode here: 📺 https://youtu.be/6mwDVDnmlQs

or you can listen to the audio version on your podcast platform of choice.

Episode six is being worked on as far as editing and making sure captions are good for the video version.

Spicy Link of the Month 🌶

Squoosh

“Squoosh is an image compression web app that allows you to dive into the advanced options provided by various image compressors.”

I use this image compression web app all the time when I need to save some space and when doing performance on my site and I see images are a little too large and affecting load times. It works great and I recommend it to all. It’s been around for a spell, but it deserves a spot here.

A11y Tip of the Month ♿️

Error handling: Make sure your error handling isaccessible. Clear language and simple instructions, sufficient (if not excellent) contrast for low vision users, helps users and instructs them to submit a form without errors, mke sure erros are structured so that screen reader users can easily and readily access those errors via their AT (Assistive Technology).

Recipe of the Month 🦞

How to Cook A Maine Lobster: Learn how to cook a Maine (North Atlantic) lobster!

Still want to see recipes? Let me know!

I am still looking for a sponsor or sponsors for the podcast to help defray expenses for transcript/captioning software (Descript) and getting a new domain and website up! Please send anyone or company my way, or if you run a company, contact me!

This newsletter gets sent out on the first of every month. Tell your friends and tell your followers!

Until then, don’t forget that you can catch me streaming on Twitch, support me on Patreon, and follow me on Twitter! You can find the links below where you can find me and ask any questions you may have.

That’s it for this month! Keep on being amazing and building great things!

Keep on, keepin’ on!!

🦞 — Todd