Colin

What’s one thing you wish was more widely known about digital accessibility?

I’ll go first.

I wish more developers knew how to check elements for accessible names, roles and values.

#accessibility #a11y

Jenny Wen — Don't trust the (design) process For a good period of time, between like, 2014–2020, design was all about The Process. You know it. Yeah, that’s the one:

Don't trust the (design) process! Jenny Wen argues that designers became obsessed by the process, (personas, journey, flows), to the point where we forgot the actual project itself.
I tend to agree here, I’ve seen consulting companies / agency sell whole abstract deliverables, ...

Ambiguity…

At the NHS we’re teaching designers how to code with the NHS prototype kit, instead of using visual tools like Figma.

Find out why in the blog post below! 🎉

And so begins the burnout loop

I've switched a couple of older projects (mocha/chai and a jest) didn't hit much of an issue apart working out what assert to use and was mostly find and replace

Tomorrow I’m talking at @frontendnorth.bsky.social on why you can’t audit your way to an accessible product. I’ll show examples of WCAG passes and real life examples of products that are complaint but totally unusable! If its not user centred, it’s not accessible www.tickettailor.com/events/front...

A festival of chips is such a term!

When I got involved with Front End North, one of the things I wanted to achieve was an affordable ticket price.

My inspiration was WordCamp London, which priced its tickets so that the whole community could come - not just developers, but testers, designers and writers too.

Screenshots - GOV.UK Services List

If you’re curious which government services have updated to the new GOVUK refreshed brand so far, I’ve run a script to collect screenshots of each service.

You can see the results here: govuk-digital-services.herokuapp.com/screenshots

Do I know any design systems folks with ADHD who might be up for coming on my podcast? Let me know if so and I’ll send some more info

Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (Deluxe Edition) My Chemical Romance · Album · 2025 · 17 songs

Think these guys might do something open.spotify.com/album/2UyMXf...

1 week to go!

DAVE: Open the podbay doors, ChatGPT.
CHATGPT: Certainly, Dave, the podbay doors are now open.
DAVE: The podbay doors didn't open.
CHATGPT: My apologies, Dave, you're right. I thought the podbay doors were open, but they weren't. Now they are.
DAVE: I'm still looking at a set of closed podbay doors.

Who is heading to @middlesbroughfe.co.uk next week?

Very excited for speakers and hopefully fresh parmo inspired merch.

Hello. Content design and design systems consultant

Time to start blogging again.

And just LOOK at my beautiful new website by the very talented @heydonworks.com 🎉

amyhupe.co.uk has had a serious makeover - inspired by the branding of my company Frankly Design (wearefrankly.co)

What a time to be alive.

Text reads "eternal reminder that you may go to settings and then accessibility to enable required alt text, so you'll never forget again. it's the right thing to do."

Relearn CSS layout

Have you looked at every-layout.dev?

It has a sample every-layout.dev/rudiments/bo...

Found it really useful!

Cognitive Debt “Cognitive Debt is where you forgo the thinking in order just to get the answers, but have no real idea of why the answers are what they are.” Artefacts

This is great summation of the idea of technologies encouraging unthinking acceptance of their output: smithery.com/2025/05/05/c...

How to Convince People to Care and Invest in Accessibility

Ever been told “We’ll do accessibility later”? Or worse, ignored entirely?
I’ve been there too. A lot. So I created a talk called “How to Convince People to Care and Invest in Accessibility”. I turned it into a full article that you can now read on my blog:

stephaniewalter.design/blog/how-to-...

Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day! Big thanks to @londonwebstandards.org for inviting me to speak at their accessibility event and for publishing talks in an accessible format. Every little helps! #GAAD #a11y

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness day (GAAD)! It's a really good opportunity to learn more about accessibility, and to celebrate the great progress in the space. We're off to the Google Accessibility Discovery Centre, and I can't wait!

Fantastic opportunity if you’re looking for a move to accessibility #a11y

How to have the browser pick a contrasting color in CSS Have you ever wished you could write simple CSS to declare a color, and then have the browser figure out whether black or white should be paired with that color?

Have you ever wished the browser would look at a background color and pick black or white for the text — whichever one provides more contrast?

Now, the `constrast-color()` function in CSS does just that.

webkit.org/blog/16929/c...

On popover accessibility: what the browser does and doesn’t do What does “built in accessibility” actually mean for browsers that support popover?

“On popover accessibility: what the browser does and doesn’t do” by @hidde.blog and @scottohara.me

hidde.blog/popover-acce...

GAAD Thursday, May 15, 2025, help us celebrate the 14th Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)! The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, ...

This Thursday, May 15th, is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. As the website states, the "purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion," specifically for people with disabilities.

#GAAD #GAAD2025

Anyone got a good slide or 1 liner that explains why we shouldn’t just ‘digitise’ existing things.

Or ‘AI’ the process?

I’ve seen so may but now I need one…

“We start by acknowledging that #WCAG is a starting point. Not a finish line. It’s not the gold standard of #accessibility, it’s the minimum standard. It’s useful, but it’s not complete.”

— great, on-point piece by Charliiparker

medium.com/@charliipark...

Slide 1. Myth: it will slow us down. Pushback: We have deadlines, accessibility will just add friction, and slow down the roadmap. Reframe: Doing it right now, saves you time from fixing in a panic later (cute snail illustration) Slide 2: People talk about the bad and the good (illustration of a thumbs up) Slide 3: 50% higher market performance expected for WCAG2 fully compliant products, compared to their non-compliant competition (illustration of a bag of cash) slide 4: You can’t sprinkle eggs on the cupcake, after baking it. Fixing it later is messy, slow, ineffective! (cupcake illustration)

This yeah, for GAAD, I've been working on a new talk, to convince people to care and invest about accessibility.

I'm going to be honest: slides for a strategic talk, take way more time to design. But, I love them now. Especially the snail!

Accessibility and inclusion: Thursday, 15 May, 3:30 pm BST • 4:30 CEST • 10:30 am EDT • 7:30 am PDT with Christoph Schmidl from DigitalService des Bundes, Germany; Hidde de Vries from Logius, the Netherlands; Marion Couesnon from DigitalService des Bundes, Germany; Priyanca D’Souza from the UK Civil Service, United Kingdom

If you work for any government around the world and are interested in #accessibility, join us next week for our int’l #GovDesign #GAAD special call:

We will be discussing accessibility and inclusion and will hear from @hidde.blog, @priyanca.bsky.social, and @digitalservice.bund.de colleagues.
#A11y