Bruce Lawson’s personal site

• CSS 3D transformations & SVG – “Resolving the co-evolutionary branches of HTML, CSS and SVG – and why it matters”
• If you ARIA label something, give it a role says Marco Zehe, screen reader user and Accessibility Lord of Mozilla.
• Making GOV.UK more than a website – using schema.org structured markup allows “meeting users where they are, meeting user needs at the point of need”, for example on Voice Assistants or in Google OneBox search results.
• Why <details> is Not an Accordion – “HTML really needs <accordion> , <tabs>, <dialog>, <dropdown>, and <tooltip> elements. Not more “low-level primitives” but good ol’ fashioned, difficult-to-get-consensus-on elements”
• CSS Guidelines – High-level advice and guidelines for writing sane, manageable, scalable CSS, by Harry Roberts
• Understanding the PDF Tags Tree
• Vivaldi browser pretends it’s Chrome so websites don’t break – “it spotlighted baseless browser incompatibilities with Google search, Google Docs, WhatsApp and Netflix. It also said it’s got problems with Medium, Microsoft Teams, Twitch, Github, Abc Go, AT&T TV Now and Shopify”
• An adventurer’s guide to W3C specs – How do all the accessibility specs and guidelines fit together?
• A Remote Tanzanian Village Logs Onto the Internet – “The Danish company Bluetown installed a hot spot in Sagara B, with download speeds fast enough for Netflix and for local life to change.”
• China is making more of Africa’s phones than you think – “Chinese companies dominate Africa’s phone market”
• Another reason Prince Andrew is a disgrace – Buried in the T&Cs of his Pitch at Palace venture is that he takes 2% of your business for zero cash for 3 years after the pitch.
• Why WeWork went wrong – “The office-space startup took a tumble when investors tired of its messianic CEO and lack of profits. But why were its backers – the House of Saud among them – so keen to pour billions into it in the first place?”. Long, and fascinating article.

Merry Consumerfest, and a Happy Nude Year!

• The CEO of Twitter and Square says he’s moving to Africa for at least 3 months next year because the continent will ‘define the future’ – I can’t say I agree with Jack about much, but here I do.
• State of European Tech report – “in 2019, 92% of funding went to all men teams, a similar level to the figures which shocked readers last year. When you break down the data by race, age, education and socioeconomic background, we see more problems emerge”
• How To Ease Your Team’s Development Workflow With Git Hooks
• Web Components and the Accessibility Object model (AOM) by Watters (Léonie Watson)
• The business case for inclusive design: The Big Hack study findings – The ‘Purple Pound’ (disposable income controlled by disabled people in UK) is an estimated £274 Billion. 67% said they would spend more money on entertainment, sports and leisure if there were no barriers to digital access.
• Ericsson Mobility Report November 2019 – “By the end of 2025, we expect 5G to have 2.6 billion subscriptions covering up to 65 percent of the world’s population and generating 45 percent of the world’s total mobile data traffic”. 76% of that data will be video.
• My thoughts on Gutenberg Accessibility by @MarcoInEnglish, a screen reader user.
• Igalia Chats with Neil Soiffer on MathML – “Igalia’s Brian Kardell sat down with Neil Soiffer, long time MathML advocate and chair of the current MathML Refresh Community Group to chat about MathML, its history, challenges and what’s next.”
• prefers-reduced-data – proposal for a new CSS media query
• NIGERIA Digital Economy Diagnostic Report (World Bank) “As the biggest economy in Africa with one of the largest youth populations in the world, Nigeria is well-positioned to develop a strong digital economy. This would have a transformational impact”
• “Pointless emails: they’re not just irritating – they have a massive carbon footprint – “More than 64m unnecessary emails are sent in UK every day. if every adult sent one fewer email a day we would save more than 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year – equivalent to 81,152 flights to Madrid or taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road.”
• Why xHamster Is So Much Better at Content Moderation Than Facebook – “as Big Tech argues against even the most minimal acts of oversight, it is worth noting that extreme scrutiny placed on the adult industry has not eradicated the industry or made it incapable of innovating”
• Frankly, We Do Give a Damn: The Relationship Between Profanity and Honesty – “profanity is positively correlated with honesty at an individual level and with integrity at a society level”. Abso-fucking-lutely.

Accessibility made the UK national TV news yesterday, hot on the heels of a report The business case for inclusive design by the UK disability charity Scope, which shows that around 50% of disabled people couldn’t buy something online that they wanted.

An accessible site is therefore a huge business opportunity, given that the latest Purple Pound estimate is £274 billion. (The Purple Pound a proxy for the purchasing power of the disabled community.)

Here’s a 4 minute interview on Channel 5 News to help persuade your bosses/ colleagues of the business case for accessibility.

Some people with disabilities say they are being shut out of online shopping because retailers don't make allowances for them.@scope says half of people avoid it because a website or app was too hard to use.

Glen Turner gives @ClaudiaLizaTV some ways they could improve. pic.twitter.com/MLim0R4pNf

— Channel 5 News (@5_News) December 2, 2019

Most of the problems that Glen talks about are easy to diagnose and solve. In fact, last week I wrote a handy Checklist to avoid the most common accessibility errors. Use it and make more money while being a better person.

Free online course!

If you want to learn more, as it’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities, W3C launched an Introduction to Web Accessibility free online course in cooperation with UNESCO. Enrol from today; the course starts 28 January 2020.