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Avoid Emoji as Class Names by Adrian Roselli
The title of this post is not broad enough. Avoid emoji as any identifier, whether as strings in your script, IDs on your elements, classes for your CSS, and so on. As soon as you start using emoji, you are blocking some users from being able to understand or use your code. It doesn’t matter how popular the technique becomes (or doesn’t).

As a screen reader user, I agree with this advice, but mostly because Jaws for Windows, (“the best-in-class screen reader), pretty much sucks at any language that isn’t written with Latin characters. And quite frankly it’s time for this situation to change. In order to read Hebrew using Jaws, I’d have to call to have a flag added to my serial number to allow for Hebrew and Arabic. I don’t have to do that with my operating system, and I can handle switching my database over so that WordPress will handle actual unicode, which is necessary for expressing anything in any language which is not composed of Latin characters, but when it comes to a screen reader for which I must maintain a license, I essentially have to ask for someone else to handle this for me. That’s crap.

If you want to read or type in Hebrew or any other non-western language on a notetaker, be prepared to turn off your speech and essentially trick the braille display if it exists into accepting Hebrew braille. Turn off the speech because otherwise you can’t think in Hebrew while typing since every notetaker embeds Eloquence, and Eloquence absolutely does not speak Hebrew. Want to interact with Hebrew text on your phone and get braille feedback? Hahahahahahahaha no because even if VoiceOver and Talkback support Hebrew, (VO supports Hebrew and will smoothly transition between it and other languages), braille displays don’t. And braille displays absolutely do not support unicode to any extent.

More broadly, regarding non-western languages and code, I don’t think we should continue to ask developers who are not native English speakers and who also do not speak a language which is expressed in Latin characters to make sure their English is good enough so they can code. That seems like an all too arbitrary requirement to me. So it’s not that I’m disagreeing with Adrian, because he’s acknowledging the reality on the ground, and practically speaking his advice is what we need to follow. I just think the whole situation of coding in general and assistive technology in particular being as incredibly ethnocentric as they are is pathetically stupid.

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IIS Outbound Rules with gzip compression by JAN REILINK
Saotn.org uses used URL Rewrite Outbound Rules in IIS, to offload content from a different server and/or host name. This should improve website performance. Just recently I noticed Outbound Rules conflicted with gzip compressed content. I started noticing HTTP 500 error messages: Outbound rewrite rules cannot be applied when the content of the HTTP response is encoded ("gzip").. Here is how to fix that error. …
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An Introduction to Block-Based Homepages with the Genesis Framework by Carrie Dils
StudioPress just released Revolution Pro, the first Genesis child theme to sport a block-based homepage. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create one.

Speaking from experience, I know exactly what Carrie is talking about when it comes to widgets being a poor choice, (although the only available one), for homepage layouts. I’ve done more than my fair share of theme customizations and often times those customizations meant hiring someone to redo the CSS. I, for one, will be over the moon when I can fully use Gutenberg and take advantage of block-based homepages.

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The practical value of semantic HTML by Bruce Lawson
It has come to my attention that many in the web standards gang are feeling grumpy about some Full Stack Developers’ lack of deep knowledge about HTML.

It’s easy to get cranky when semantic HTML is ignored by developers, and that’s usually my cue to quit for the day if possible. This is probably the funniest take I’ve read on the subject of HTML, and I kind of want to steal and modify slightly that footer text and use it on my personal site. This post is also written in a way that allows you to steal the points and add them to your notebook if you’re into that sort of thing.

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Blindness Charities And Money, Part 1: The Aggregation by Chris Hofstader
many of the biggest blindness organizations are sitting atop a mountain of cash while spending relatively little on programs for the people they state they are helping.

I would encourage every blind person in the strongest possible terms to read the most recent article by Chris Hofstader and download the data. I would especially encourage the blind people who has been contracted by any of these organizations to do things like build websites or write software to read through this data and then make decisions with regard to whether or not you’re going to work with these organizations and how you are going to price your services based on this data and not the sob stories or excuses provided by these organizations when they plead lack of budget coupled with great need for your services. It’s one thing to suspect they’re screwing you over with no proof. It’s a very different, and bigger, ball of wax to know that they are screwing you over, have proof of it, and then contrast that with the “have a large impact”, “make a difference”, “help the cause”, “we’ll send you referals” kind of language that is so often used when they pitch for things like websites or apps. I will not only be reading through this data myself, but also passing this on to any blind person who has been my student, formally or otherwise, when it comes to WordPress.