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Wow. Apparently I have not had enough coffee yet, because I just tried to log into a WordPress install on a domain I haven’t owned for a while now. I have no idea why I even typed that domain as I haven’t thought about it in months. Maybe even a year or more. I’m not sure why it popped into my head just now. I wasn’t planning to be up this early today, but my brain woke me up around 4AM, so up it is I guess. Welcome to Sunday.

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I want to put an Apple Watch on a drummer from a speed metal band. Then, I want that drummer to perform a concert, and I want to see the results. Specifically, the step count and the exercise/move numbers. That would be really interesting. Come on speed metal drummers, cough up your data! Think of the children!

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I’m helping a screen reader who has been recently introduced to WordPress configure their new site, and noticed that they were becoming frustrated with the clutter of their WordPress administration menu thanks to plugins arbitrarily adding things to their top-level menus and inserting their own top-level menus in between the out-of-the-box ones. I had them install Menu Humility by Mark Jaquith. Despite the plugin not being updated in over a year, it still works exactly as it is intended, and I install it on every new site I build and every site I rebuild. I’ve mentioned this plugin before on this site, but wanted to mention it again because I find it so useful in my quest to minimize the trashfire that can result when plugin and theme authors clutter the dashboard in order to fulfill their own hopes or desires for more downloads or upgrades with no regard for the users actually using WordPress. If you’re running the latest version of WordPress, (and you really should be), upon viewing the plugin in the plugins/add-new screen, you’ll get a notice that says “untested with your version of WordPress.” In this case, ignore that notice, because this still works, thanks to WordPress’s commitment to backwards compatibility. This isn’t so much an accessibility issue as it is a “get off my lawn, stop cluttering my dashboard with your crap, my dashboard isn’t your playground” kind of scenario. Menu Humility isn’t the only plugin that can help with dashboard clutter, but it’s the first step to making it a saner place which induces less rage. Go get it if you haven’t already.

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I still think it’s pretty messed up that, for the purpose of getting the topic of equal access for all on the web some play, we have to refer to the benefits for search engine optimization, (most of which are myths), because that’s the only way most people are going to pay attention. It’s either that, or try scaring people by reminding that eventually, they won’t be fully abled. I get it, I’m not going to stop doing it, but it’s still one of the less-desirable, less-lovable parts of accessibility for me.

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The difference between keyboard and screen reader navigation by léonie Watson
People often include screen reader users in the much larger group of keyboard-only users. Whilst this is correct (most screen reader users don’t use a mouse), it also creates a false impression of the way screen reader users navigate content.

This is a really good primer for anyone building things for the web as well as screen reader users on the differences between screen reader and keyboard navigation. I’ve seen lots of situations where the two are conflated, by both developers and screen reader users.

Also, I really like the footer text on léonie’s site.

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The president bemoans the indiscriminate bombing of Idlib Province as his administration indiscriminately bans anyone from said province from seeking refuge from that bombing. Thoughts and prayers for all those dead civilions and their families I guess. The one person who could do something to alleviate some of the suffering for some of the people would rather play keyboard commando instead. What a pathetic contemptible weakling.

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Shoutout to the humans I know who work at Google and had to endure the outages Sunday and yesterday. It might be fun to snark on social media when big companies fall on their faces, but there are always humans who end up having to stick around and thanklessly fix the messes. I don’t know if any of you were caught up in that, but if you were I hope you get some extra off-time.