Perceived affordances and the functionality mismatch
Styling one element to look like another creates a mismatch between the actions people expect to take and the ones they actually can, highlighting the essential problem with this common pattern.
Latest posts
Thoughts on skin tone and text descriptions
Jake Archibald asked whether skin tone should be mentioned in alt text, and as a blind person I've asked myself the same thing, so his post has prompted me to think out loud about how we normalise diversity for people who cannot see.
Patrick H. Lauke's goulash
I'm bringing together food and technology again with this fifteenth post in the series, featuring a meltingly good goulash recipe from Patrick H. Lauke of the web standards community.
Notes on synthetic speech
I've been thinking about conversational interfaces and the importance of voice quality in user experience, particularly as a screen reader user who's been listening to the same synthetic voice for about 20 years.
AccessiBe and data protection?
The case against accessibility overlays is well established, but AccessiBe's privacy practices deserve closer scrutiny—particularly how it tracks your browsing activity and personal data across websites.
Thoughts on screen readers and image recognition
Text alternatives for images have been an accessibility first principle since 1999, but over 30% of homepage images are still missing descriptions, leaving blind users unable to see or use that content.
Playing with Envision Glasses
Vision accounts for most of our brain's electrical activity, but AI apps like Microsoft's SeeingAI have only partially solved the problem for blind people — you still have to point your phone at what you want to see, which is inconvenient and socially awkward.
Everybody be Coil. You... Be Coil
I've decided to monetize this website using Web Monetization and become a Coil member because I've had enough of intrusive online advertising, tracking, and having my personal information bought and sold across the web.
How screen readers navigate data tables
When a table is created with appropriate HTML elements or ARIA roles, screen readers can inform users about table characteristics and provide keyboard commands for navigating tabular content.
The difference between aria-label and aria-labelledby
aria-label and aria-labelledby do the same job but in different ways, and it's easy to confuse them with unintended results. This post explains the differences and how to choose the right one.