Reading Time: 3 minutes TL;DR Should we redesign our keyboard human-computer (HCI) interactions? Yes. Calculating the key problem I was writing an advert for 2 items and wondered, where’s the multiplication symbol is on my Mac and Windows keyboard? Any keyboard? How do I write this math operator in my electronic documents for screen readers to announce correctly? I […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes Bulleted lists break up dense blocks of content. They make scanning for discrete content and reading easier for visual readers. A Bronze content user experience (UX) elevates to Golden. Meanwhile, people using a screen reader hear more meta-information. Depending on mode and setting, each list and bullet announces. The UX remains Bronze or lower. With […]
Reading Time: 7 minutes Labelling is a positive strategy. A good label makes a complex concept understandable, actionable, and memorable. These benefits apply negatively when labels stigmatise, discriminate, or cause offense. Simple Labels (and Math) In the June 2021 News, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recognised that regional labels applied to Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) variants stigmatised the areas […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes I’m irritated when those arrays of filters or options we are offered to update lists of data are badly coded. You know, those lozenge-shaped UI components designers refer to as pills or capsules? Like the pharmaceuticals they describe it’s vital we prescribe the correct one. They look like a bunch of buttons and update the […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes According to a Google search for, “happiest language in the world” the happiest language is Spanish. Chinese is the least happy. Could this help explain why developers, designers and writers working in English are among the most miserable b’stards online? Example The following is a random example from the Tesco.com homepage that offers just two […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes I often write articles around writing for digital and cognition and I have yet to list my working strategies. We like writing strategies. They are many and easy to find for good and bad. I only want to list my own although clearly I apply Pyramid Writing. Every designer knows how to write copy right? […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute One Day everyone publishing web content will understand when their best visual design decision results in a poor content experience. In the meantime, let’s lament the loss of common sense. I award the Fandom’s Blackadder Wiki a meritorious mention for its near impossible link colour contrast ratio of 2.35:1! Who would intentionally do that. Really. […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes In this post I: Revisit the misunderstanding between the alternative text attribute (alt) and its value. Consider the editorial intention of images that convey emotion and ask, should I add a new branch to my Alternative Text Shrubbery? Why this topic? Alternative text attributes are the simplest accessibility recommendation to apply (Sydik, 2007), and a […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute A year after our MSc UX Speculative Design project submission and Timekettle is emerging with many of the features we speculated on for the project. It’s exciting to learn of the features they have prioritised and developed for their WT2 Edge in-ear translator. As we speculated, Timekettle bring conversational controls with a tap (if more […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes Listen to or watch any smartphone review this year and there’s an energetic reference to the camera’s zoom. “7 to 12x”. X? What’s Zoom then? Zoom is the change of a camera lens’ focal length. We zoom in to make the subject appear bigger in the frame and zoom out to; well, you get the […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes Emmet didn’t come naturally to me. My favourite YouTube codey stars and Emmet emissaries use it and without viewing their keyboard strokes I was left eager and still confused. What’s Emmet? I’ll let the Emmet website explain: “…most text editors out there allow you to store and re-use commonly used code chunks, called “snippets”. While […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes Marc Marc posted a poll on the WCAG A11y Professionals Facebook page to gauge opinion of frameworks v. native JS and CSS. I added the following sermon from my pulpit as the topic resonates with this week’s, Taking Control of Agile UX presentation by Jared Spool of Center Centre. Jared restated my belief that our […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes When we write web content in valid vanilla HTML, the Internet is a far more inclusive product. Only the skill of our writers could change that. In this article I argue to drop Markdown as your primary writing medium and write to, or into HTML. Comments are open 🙂 Digital Writing Digital writing is different […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute Too many bells, whistles, and other dog poo added to UI and UX education, articles, and videos obsess visual delight while negating even basic accessible or inclusive design. When we employ ableist 3rd-party solutions, we must take responsibility for implementing them inclusively. Dog poo is accessible, too. We don’t want to wade through it. […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes Why? Static wireframes are not prototypes. I expect to use this technique when demonstrating inclusive and accessible UX or UI design strategies. These include relative units, fluid responsiveness, and server responses that static wireframes or [insert ‘prototyping’ software of choice] click-through output can only fail to convey. Starting Out It’s been a while since I […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute Darn Covid 19 in 2020. Our graduation is in absentee—or some such concept spoken in Latin to dress the situation up a bit. Here’s our segment on YouTube at 27 min and 27 seconds introduced by my supervisor, Dr Andrew Errity. You’ll spot me: one of only two names poor Andrew needed to name in […]
Reading Time: 11 minutes ☰ Navigate this post: Introduction My Initial Thinking Adrian Replies The Missing Je Ne Sais Pas More Thinking Required Use Cases Solutions That Fail Summary Reference this Post Introduction I happened upon and was impressed by Adrian Roselli’s post, “Dialog Focus in Screen Readers”. His testing set me a line of thought current to my […]
Reading Time: 12 minutes ☰ Navigate this post: Introduction The Problem Missed Opportunity Experiments Testing Solutions Solution when all else is impossible Summary Reference this post Introduction I’m concerned when we expect screen reader users to overcome our design and technology shortcomings. Why should they ‘work around’ barriers we create? When they learn a ‘workaround’ that becomes a global […]
Reading Time: 8 minutes Note. This post is a work in progress. A decade ago we got excited by two new HTML tags; the details and its nested summary. We all watched the demonstrations and immediately thought, “accordions” are finally available out the box! Why not: the accordion was already a pervasive UI pattern? The Vanilla “Details” and “Summary” […]
Reading Time: < 1 minute Hoorah for Monica Dinculescu (‘Meownica‘) of Google calling out developers who don’t “bake-in” accessibility to their apps like blueberries in a muffin recipe: “If you don’t want to make accessible apps, then you are a terrible person and you shouldn’t be making apps for anybody. You should be doing something else.” Dinculescu (2016) The following […]