Blog

If you’re interested in accessibility, user experience design, and/or frontend development, you’re in the right place. You can also browse by category or year.

  1. WWDC 2023 roundup

    Article posted 11th June 2023 in Apple

    Around this time every year I make a pizza, close the living room door, open a cold beer, and sit down to watch WWDC (Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference). Here are my thoughts.

  2. Don’t meddle with user input

    Article posted 29th May 2023 in Accessibility and Design

    Every idea comes from a good place, but some well-intended features are actually bad for usability; limiting form field input is one of those things.

  3. Getting VoiceOver to shut up

    Article posted 30th April 2023 in Accessibility and Apple

    The whole point of VoiceOver is that it talks out loud, but sometimes you need it to be quiet for a moment.

  4. VoiceOver’s Trackpad Commander on Mac

    Article posted 21st April 2023 in Accessibility and Apple

    Did you know there’s a way to make VoiceOver on a Mac behave like VoiceOver on an iPhone or iPad? No? Let me introduce you to Trackpad Commander!

  5. The difference between Increased Contrast Mode and Windows High Contrast Mode (Forced Colours Mode)

    Article posted 27th March 2023 in Accessibility and CSS

    I’ve written about Increased Contrast Mode and Windows High Contrast Mode, but what’s the difference? And where does Forced Colours Mode come in?

  6. Windows high contrast mode and focus outlines or: My focus indicators were inaccessible

    Article posted 22nd March 2023 in Accessibility, CSS and Development

    In order to make my website’s keyboard focus outlines pretty in Safari, I inadvertently broke things for people who use Windows High Contrast Mode.

  7. If you’re going to do a job, do it properly

    Article posted 17th February 2023 in Accessibility

    I often hear the phrase “forward fix” used when referring to accessibility. It sounds fancy, but what it really means is “We’ll come back to the accessibility bit later”.

  8. Buttons, links, and focus

    Article posted 16th February 2023 in Accessibility and Design

    Knowing when to use a button or link is important, and there’s some great guidance out there. Here’s another way to work out when to use which.

  9. If you need a link, don’t use a button

    Article posted 23rd January 2023 in Accessibility, Design and Development

    Links sometimes need to look like buttons, but what about the other way round? Spoiler alert: it’s a terrible idea!

  10. Overlapping interactive areas

    Article posted 30th December 2022 in Accessibility, Design and Development

    When an interactive element like a button, link, and form field sits on top of another interactive element, accessibility (and usability) problems arise.