Blog

  • No Firefox that’s a bad Firefox! You don’t eat all the RAM! #SuchMonday #SuchCoffee

  • Are we going to regret this?

    I’m only part of the way through this and I’m already feeling bad because I haven’t sat down and artiulated a bunch of goals for the new year. The only one I have so far is importing my entire Facebook archive into my personal site. I totally feel Brad on the blogging thing though because it’s enjoyable but I think spending all the time on social media kind of drains that. There’s a solution for this though: Indieweb, and blog posts don’t have to be five thousand words long. They can be a single photo or a bookmark or, like this one, a record of listening to a podcast episode. There are already lots of resources for adding various post kinds functionality to WordPress sites, including bookmarklets and apps for your phone. Definitely makes blogging easier.

  • XSS in hidden input fields

    I can absolutely see a case where users would interact, and and therefore become vulnerable to this exploit: Keyboard-only users, screen reader users, and speech recognition users. So this might be worth looking into, especially if you’re adding a ton of keyboard shortcuts to your app and calling it an accessibility improvement.

  • FOSS was never about trust in software owners. It was about not needing to trust them to begin with

    This is a good read regarding the event-stream ongoing saga, and I agree with it, but I also have some things to add to it. For those of you who may not be familiar, (non-developers), event-stream was pulled from Node Package Manager, (something that gets used pretty frequently when building software in order to manage dependencies, otherwise known as other code bits you need in order to run/build your code bit), because it relied on another package which was found to have vulnerabilities. It was then handed over to someone else, who promptly added a cryptocurrency iner to it, at which point the internets freaked out. Frankly I don’t completely blame the new maintainer for adding the cryptocurrency miner. There are very large corporations who have no problem using open source software for their benefit, all while not supporting the maintainers. See for example: Apple and Microsoft. And if you can’t be relied on to hit that donate button, well then we’ll just use your processing power because eating habbits need to be supported. I’d like to add to the post I’m linking to though that, while I think code does need to be simpler and thus easier to understand, I also think maybe we need to simplify our build processes. But back to the “understanding” point, reading code is a learned skill, and I think to a certain extent it’s on the users, (and in this case the users are developers), to learn how to read code. As much as I’d like code to be simpler, outside of everyone who writes code taking courses/reading books on best practice and then applying all that, I don’t see this happening.

  • Playboy.com Sued by Man Alleging Website Not Accessible to the Blind

    I’m trying to decide if TMZ counts as accessibility hitting the mainstream or not. Also, someone should let them know that, (while Playboy Magazine has been available as part of the National Library Service for the Blind and Visually Handicapped for decades), in both braille and audio formats, blind people do not read Playboy for the articles. Some blind people are avid consumers of adult entertainment just as some sighted people are. Also, dear Playboy, if Pornhub can figure out how to make their entire site accessible while preserving its nature and content, you can too.

  • We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads

    I came across this while reading an article about deleting Facebook even though deleting Facebook is a privilege. I appreciate the note of hope at the end, because I don’t believe simply disengaging from all these problems, (including the secondary ones like how we deal with politics and social issues as a society), is truly an option. Disengaging is not an option in my opinion because these issues are going to effect our lives and the lives of those around us whether we engage or not, and I think it’s better to have at least a slight idea of what’s coming and what’s happening than no idea at all.

  • Pocket has really nice integration with Firefox but asking me to solve a CAPTCHA every time I log in is very annoying. Time to move my bookmarks from there to my own site. #indieweb

  • First Website Accessibility Agreement Reached With WCAG 2.1 As Its Standard

    I’m glad to see that WCAG 2.1 is being adopted so quickly. It was released on June 5, 2018, WCAG 2.0 took a while to be adopted as the standard. 2.1 does a lot to address the needs of not only people with disabilities, but also people who are older, (sorry screen reader users, it’s not just about us and it never has been), and I’m pleased to see that we didn’t have to wait two years to see it adopted. I’m also glad the National Federation of the Blind resorted to structured negotiation and not a lawsuit, and would like to see more campaigning in the organization’s ranks for this approach.

  • We need web inaccessibility excuse bingo.

  • I now have a checkbox on my add new post screen which lets me choose whether or not to send posts to Jetpack subscribers, which means I get to have the best of both worlds. Thanks for that filter, Jetpackers.

  • Some quick thoughts on the @dequesystems hackathon at this year’s #WCUS contributor day that wouldn’t fit in 280 characters. Hint: This is awesome.

    I’m really, really glad to see that Deque Systems is participating in/holding a hackathon at this year’s WordCamp US contributor day along with the Accessibility Team and those on the core team who are familiar with WordPress’s testing environment, in order to integrate aXe-Core into our core. Can we call this inception yet? I use Tenon, (a competing tool), and of course I’m a Tenon fan, but I also really like aXe-core. I just find it harder to use as a screen reader user trying to fight with Firefox’s developer tools, and Chrome’s developer tools are less accessible than Firefox’s. I’m still working out some last minute details to hopefully make it to WCUS this year so I can participate. I don’t know much about WordPress’s tests but would love to help in person any way I can. Plus, it’s WordCamp. This is an incredibly positive step forward for both WordPress as well as Gutenberg, and nothing makes me happier than to see it. This is the starting point on the road to making Gutenberg one of the most awesome things on the planet in my opinion: a block editor and eventually a complete site editor with drag-and-drop capabilities that everyone can use.

  • Dear #WordPress leadership: Get your shit together because this is one of a handfull of people who are actually #a11y experts who are also skilled React devs and your squandering WordPress’s hard-won rep on a11y for an arbitrary deadline is a damn shame.

  • Push without notifications

    I clicked on the link for Jeremy’s presentation, only to be directed to his book on this subject, which I will promptly be buying. I spent a little time looking through the A Book Apart catalog and didn’t realize that had so much cool stuff. And yes, as a user, I would really appreciate not being annoyed on a constant basis by websites I’ve given permission to notify me. I gave Slack permission to do that on the old computer and that was one of the first things I didn’t set up on the new one.

  • In Reply To: “WYSIWYG Editor Blues” by Greg McVerry

    The first thing I can tell you that may help you solve part of the problem you’re experiencing is that, unless you have WordPress’s wpautop function overridden, you do not need to add paragraph tags to your code. YOu simply need to separate paragraphs by pressing the enter key twice, as you would in a word processor. If you’re like me and you despise the fact that WordPress picks on the humble paragraph tag, you can disable it using either by filtering wpautop or by using a plugin like Toggle wpautop. To add your syndication sources, (at least for things that aren’t yet supported by the Syndication Links plugin), I would recommend adding some custom buttons to your editor. YOu can do that by using a plugin called Tiny MCE Advanced. YOu can also do it with code but if you’re just trying to get something done quickly and you don’t feel like writing yourself a custom functionality plugin for the buttons, this will do it without all the trouble.

  • Lazy day today.

    Map showing Augusta, GA, 30909, United States
    Augusta, Georgia

    55 °F Partially cloudy

  • Back home. It’s been a fun evening.

    Map showing Augusta, GA, 30909, United States
    Augusta, Georgia

    58 °F Overcast

  • Watching movies and hanging out with Barbara, Wil and Denise.

    Map showing Augusta, GA, United States
    Augusta, Georgia

    59 °F Overcast

  • Picking up some incidentals.

    Map showing 2803 Wrightsboro Rd, Augusta, GA, 30909, United States
    Augusta, Georgia

    60 °F Partially cloudy

  • Lots of peacocks and swans here, and a baby goat that was eating flowers but would not let me pet it.

    Map showing 355 Currytown RD, North Augusta, SC, 29860, United States
    North Augusta, SC

    60 °F Partially cloudy

  • Running away for a little while.

    Map showing Interstate 20, North Augusta, SC, 30907, United States
    North Augusta, SC

    65 °F Rain, Partially cloudy