James Edwards

Web accessibility consultant specialising in accessible JavaScript; neurodivergent (ADHD), writer, musician, rainbow socialist 🦄🏳️‍🌈 fancies himself a philosopher when the moment speaks 🌼

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npub15yr2lhln65z06c60a7yp97c04g204386jknzfktf7s9jef4q6gysd7pa64

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siblingpastry_at_mastodon.world@momostr.pink

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nprofile1qqs2zp40mlea2p8avd87lzqjlv865986cnaftf3ym95lgzev56sdyzgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds7tqx4y

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub15yr2lhln65z06c60a7yp97c04g204386jknzfktf7s9jef4q6gysd7pa64

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Last Notes

2025-11-01 10:13:25 UTC

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I’ve encountered that too … do they really not see what they’re really saying, or just not willing to say it❓🤷‍♂️

2025-10-26 20:59:13 UTC

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I confess I’ve yet to find any needed use-case for it 🤷‍♂️

2025-09-30 17:41:37 UTC

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“I don’t wanna do touristy stuff, I wanna do something real.”
“We could go to the dentist and then do a big shop?”

2025-09-30 06:14:33 UTC

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Milk has to be cold, stop lights have to be red, links have to work. I’m on board 👍
@npub1pzz…4cwx @npub18vj…g4zy

2025-09-29 19:19:04 UTC

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If he gets a Nobel prize, there won’t be any more, the entire concept will collapse. Maybe that’s the point, for him.

2025-09-29 08:21:55 UTC

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Not to mention patronising, as if readers who need large text or a screen reader have no idea how to do that 🤦‍♂️
They’re clearly covering their ass, but reputationally, to me, this just makes it worse.

2025-09-28 21:16:03 UTC

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I guess I’m a bit jaded lol, I’ve seen too much bad accessibility caused by blase lack of effort or care, so assumed the other way

2025-09-28 21:07:49 UTC

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If the phone was an additional helpline for a robustly accessible site, staffed by people with the knowledge and motivation to help, then yeah I’m all for that as a positive thing.

2025-09-28 19:16:58 UTC

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Yeah the second one, it’s glib and dismissive and frankly patronising as fuck, in my view.

2025-09-28 18:51:09 UTC

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Anger and despair come to mind

2025-09-23 15:48:28 UTC

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Sparkle the Unicorn Princess ftw 🦄
UK government is pushing AI adoption by saying we need to “build greater public trust in the technology”.
But how the fuck can we trust a technology that is fundamentally untrustworthy and exploitative, on the word of politicians so detached from reality that they suppose benefits like “giving working people more time at home with their families, because it makes their jobs more efficient and means fewer hours in the office” 🤦

2025-09-20 16:36:57 UTC

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Ace 👍
You might enjoy this semi-rant I wrote a while ago. https://www.tpgi.com/the-ballad-of-text-overflow/

2025-09-20 13:08:34 UTC

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or you could just not truncate the …

2025-09-20 01:35:26 UTC

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Ah I see — full citizenship, not just residency? Presumably the vetting process also eliminates anyone who isn’t white (or orange)

2025-09-20 00:33:05 UTC

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Isn’t that essentially a co-opt anyway — $1m investment guarantees a green card — that’s been around for decades hasn’t it?

2025-09-19 06:07:37 UTC

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Do you remember the days when new jeans only came in vivid dark blue, which was super uncool so you had to manually distress them (wash them with rocks, drag them behind your bike), and they still lasted ~10 years after that?

2025-09-18 21:56:20 UTC

Finally deleted the Facebook app from my phone. It was like a scab I couldn’t stop picking at. But removing it meant I had to redesign the collage of icons on my home screen, which is why I left it there so long.

2025-09-16 19:07:21 UTC

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Jodhpurs, yeah that'd work. Or motorbike trousers, go full-on leather

2025-09-16 19:03:17 UTC

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Leather patches? Like basically the part that’s missing from chaps 😁

2025-09-16 18:57:50 UTC

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Ha that’s cunning 👍 I used to have some jeans made of what seemed to be a denim-Lycra blend, so they were stretchy, which was kinda cool.

2025-09-16 18:53:20 UTC

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Yeah 5 is usual, so it would be the pairs apart from the back one. Another tie that’s worked is the two either side of (but not including) the back one.
btw. Why don’t women’s trousers have good pockets? Does it ultimately come down to — “looking shapely is more important than comfort or utility” — kinda shit?

2025-09-16 18:41:38 UTC

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I can’t wear belts or tight trousers because the pressure hurts my bladder, so a trick I figured out is two short strips of knicker elastic (or similar 😇) tied between pairs of belt loops at the side. So they sit on my hips but can still be slack at the front.

2025-09-15 16:01:54 UTC

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Or the DoJ wins, then the Supreme Court strikes it down.
Given how this administration is painting DEIA as unfair discrimination, it really wouldn't surprise me if he tried to make it illegal.

2025-08-24 23:53:59 UTC

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If you factor in the time cost of writing, I’ve made a huge loss on every book I’ve written or co-written. There is practically zero money in tech publishing, the price reflects production costs at low volume.

2025-06-27 12:21:03 UTC

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Jesus, I had no idea what this song meant before! It was a family joke when I was a kid that the song's about "Elephants' ears".
On a similar subject, what about the biblical story of Salome, and the downright fucking twisted way that's immortalized, as though she's some kind of dangerous seductress or corrupting influence, when she's clearly the victim.

2025-06-11 12:04:56 UTC

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What are “magic numbers”?

2025-06-11 12:04:24 UTC

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I couldn’t stick with it past the first couple of sections, the survey is way way too long.

2025-06-04 14:10:36 UTC

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But is it truly black, or is it just very very very dark blue? Father Ted might know, but then he'd have an EU one anyway.

2025-06-03 15:23:57 UTC

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I wished I'd learned this earlier in my career -- that writing to support a point of view is allowed to change its mind. It's fine to mostly finish a draft only to realize I was wrong all along, and then write to acknowledge that.
Same with school essays -- I wish someone had told me that the essay doesn't have to agree with the premise.

2025-06-03 15:04:49 UTC

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I don't know about mapping, but if that's possible then you would probably only map Control+Option since that's the "VO key". You'd need to look in the VoiceOver Utility to see what's possible.
Is it the browser tabs you're stuck in? What keystrokes are you trying to escape?

2025-06-03 15:01:26 UTC

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A useful trick/keystroke to remember is Control+Option+Shift+ArrowDown which moves between content views (such as between the browser chrome and the viewport region).
If you find the VO cursor (black rectangle) outlining the whole page, but you can't navigate inside it, then that's what you need to press.

2025-06-03 13:36:36 UTC

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Totally agree.

2025-06-03 13:31:07 UTC

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Is that a reason for not testing though? VO/Chrome is a statistically relevant proportion of screen reader users (about 2% to Safari's 7% according to WebAIM).
What I would say is that if something works fine in VO/Safari and in Windows screen readers too, but VO/Chrome is the outlier that doesn't work ... then sometimes it's fine to say, fuck it that's Chrome's fault, depending on how critical it is.

2025-05-14 12:31:23 UTC

Using `<text>` inside `<svg>` is accessible if the SVG doesn't have a `role`. However if it has `role="img"` (plus accessible name) then most screen readers ignore the `<text>` and only announce the name.
Therefore, using `<text>` inside `<svg role="img">` comes under SC 1.1.1 Non-text Content, and the text must be included in the accessible name or description. And this does pass SC 1.4.5 Images of Text (because users can visually customize it).
#a11y #accessibility #svg

2025-05-07 18:10:16 UTC

Fantastic article from @npub1247…zzvh examining CSS Carousels implemented with the new features in CSS Overflow 5, and the depressingly-numerous (yet entirely unsurprising) accessibility issues they present.
Along the way, she deftly explains the core concepts of accessible semantics and screen reader testing, so the article is understandable even if you have no prior knowledge of those things.
https://www.sarasoueidan.com/blog/css-carousels-accessibility/
#a11y #accessibility #css

2025-05-04 14:05:48 UTC

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I read Margaret Atwood’s Mad Adam trilogy in the wrong order (2,3,1) although I didn’t know that until I got to 1. But I still that’s the best order to read them.

2025-05-03 09:54:58 UTC

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That one needs the long nasal “n”

2025-05-03 09:15:03 UTC

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oh btw I really enjoyed your whimsical presentation, been meaning to say.
Made me think it should be fairly easy to write a script that emulates progressive JPEG loading on a dial-up modem. The ultimate stress toy (for when you want to feel stressed) 😁

2025-05-03 09:12:10 UTC

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Yay the Galleria! I did a tap dance at the opening ceremony 😎

2025-05-03 09:02:53 UTC

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Hey wow, I grew up in Welwyn Garden City. My parents are both northerners though, I have some of their idioms and pronunciation.

2025-05-03 09:00:25 UTC

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Please tell me you don’t say “onvelope” … that’s yuppie pronunciation to my ears 😆

2025-05-03 08:58:40 UTC

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I have Kr’sont though, I think that’s an American pronunciation.

2025-05-03 08:57:08 UTC

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Kinda only just pronounce the T, like a glottal stop.

2025-05-03 08:48:54 UTC

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Kwa-sont 🥐
Is there any other way?
Kr’sont? That just sounds like Klingon.
Kroy-sant? A brand name for tampons.

2025-05-02 20:52:32 UTC

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Pushing at the edges is awesome, it deserves to be cool. I just wish it would stop trashing accessibility. That “is accessible” is a fundamental part of the definition of “ground breaking and cool”.
Yeah I know … preaching to the converted.

2025-05-02 18:41:38 UTC

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Hopefully Chrome's implementation should give the others a push now.

2025-05-02 18:28:44 UTC

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> i also worry about the progressive enhancement story for this. until this is implemented in all browsers, it probably should not be used.
Agreed 100%. For now, the best advice is don't use CSS that makes the visual order contradict the logical order.

2025-05-02 18:27:48 UTC

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> maybe the real problem here is that CSS can drastically change the visual order of elements.
Well yeah, that's exactly the problem, and this is the solution. There's no option here to stop CSS from being able to change visual order, that ship has sailed. So these properties provide a means to adjust reading order as well, so it matches the visual order.

2025-05-02 18:18:42 UTC

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The whole purpose of these properties is to solve accessibility problems. Yeah they could be misused, but anything could be.

2025-05-02 12:18:13 UTC

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It makes no sense though, even in purely economic terms, socialism is inherently cheaper and more efficient.
Sure, there are always people who exploit systems to be greedy or evade responsibility, but apparently that's okay if they get rich from it. Just like Thatcher wanted.

2025-05-02 12:15:08 UTC

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Fear? Ignorance? Political self-interest? All of the above?

2025-05-02 11:47:09 UTC

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I'm just remembering something else too. I would have been 16 or 17, and a woman approached me in the street asking if I'd buy a flower from her. I think she was a Romany traveller. Conversation went basically like this:
"Will you buy a flower?"
"No. Why should I?"
"To help me."
"Why can't you help yourself?"
"I'm doing what I can."
That really struck me, fundamentally undermining the "I'm alright jack" mood of the time. It was the first step toward my eventual socialist epiphany.

2025-05-02 11:44:13 UTC

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I never gave much thought to my dad's conservative views until around the same age, when I came home wearing a communist party badge (they were trendy, and red and gold which looks cool, I didn't get the implications). He fair ranted about that one lol.
But he was a Tory party member, and he used to pay me to deliver election leaflets. The vitriolic reaction I sometimes got from people did make me start noticing the disparity, that my dad's views weren't universal.

2025-05-02 10:13:29 UTC

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I wonder how that tracks with response bias. When I worked at MORI we did studies that showed Tory voters tend to downplay their conservative values in opinion polls, producing poll results that underestimate Conservative support.
Aside, I was born in Lincolnshire, on the Isle of Axholme. Didn’t get into the politics though, what with being a baby and all.

2025-04-29 20:05:06 UTC

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That didn't work. But I did figure a solution, which takes advantage of how the virtual pointer behaves in JAWS.
When you press a button with ENTER or SPACE, it fires simulated `mousedown` and `mouseup` events preceding the `click`. However since the actual trigger is a repeatable key, it fires repeating mouse events in the same way that a vanilla browser fires `keydown` events (i.e., `mouseup` repeats as well!)
@npub1css…4pqe

2025-04-29 12:45:21 UTC

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I’ll give that a try, thanks

2025-04-29 12:26:08 UTC

Does anyone know how to block key repeats when ENTER is used to fire `click` events on a `<button>`?
nb. the solution can't use `keydown` or `keyup` since it has to work with virtual cursor mode in JAWS.
#javascript #accessibility

2025-04-14 12:14:28 UTC

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Them: "Just be yourself"
Me: (is myself)
Them: "No not like that, more like other people."

2025-04-09 09:35:01 UTC

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When I saw that I kinda imagined her as the voice of reason, like her face is saying “what kinda bullshit are you talking about now?”

2025-04-03 17:24:17 UTC

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This could be a case of trying to find logic in decisions that weren't made on any rational basis.
Clearly the cited reasons are bullshit and other agendas are being served here, but hard to guess at the details of what those are, over and above basic bullying tactics (if you do what we say, we'll reduce your tariff).
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the basic strategy is -- anything to fuck with China, the only country in the world that could meaningfully stand up to the US.

2025-04-03 16:59:15 UTC

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Could that be an intentional loophole -- some attempt to undermine China's international shipping industry, or to cause conflict between China and Singapore?

2025-04-03 10:41:57 UTC

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm8fYf53SMg

2025-04-02 01:24:53 UTC

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Kinda sounds to me like you’re describing ADHD traits @npub150c…pfmx

2025-04-01 09:14:03 UTC

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This is brilliant 🤩
Do you know the 80s tune “Popcorn” (by Hot Butter)? Hum it in 12/8 and it sounds like Do You Hear The People Sing.

2025-03-30 17:32:43 UTC

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Sounds comparable to the impact of UKIP leading to Brexit. Divisions that nobody much cared about now rip through us like cracks in a window, and badges that were little more than ideological hand-waving now unify into proud symbols of intolerance.

2025-03-29 17:08:56 UTC

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will there be a video of your talk itself?

2024-12-21 09:17:35 UTC

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Counting in 12 goes back thousands of years, you could write a “historical use of 12” article every day for the rest of your life. 🙂
Because it’s easily divisible into halves, thirds and quarters.
Clocks, dates, currencies, units and measurements, legends and mythologies, they all stem from that practical simplicity, and reinforce an almost magical ubiquity. The comparisons you could make between distant times and cultures could be fascinating.
I’d read that blog 👍

2024-12-18 14:28:03 UTC

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The conflation with forced-colors makes it essentially useless. See: https://kilianvalkhof.com/2023/css-html/i-no-longer-understand-prefers-contrast/ @npub1agr…9xth @npub1uhk…t6j8 @npub197g…q2n4

2024-12-18 13:52:15 UTC

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If you implement a theme switcher, and it's not the default,
and users can easily switch between themes -- then you can implement a low-contrast theme which doesn't have to meet WCAG contrast requirements, because the default theme constitutes a conforming alternate version.
So the default must conform with 1.4.3 and 1.4.11, but alternate themes don't have to.
(The switcher control itself must always conform, in all themes, to be an accessible mechanism.)
@npub1uhk…t6j8 @npub197g…q2n4

2024-12-17 10:24:06 UTC

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Respecting preferences is important for accessibility if those preferences are also access needs. If it’s simply a case of, one mode looks nicer than the other, then respecting that has nothing to do with accessibility (which doesn’t make it unimportant, just, not an accessibility concern).
Dark mode doesn’t reconcile this either way, because whether or not it provides a vector for user customisation is not under the user’s control, it’s the author who makes that choice.

2024-12-17 10:03:06 UTC

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Oh I see, yeah I’ve read those links, and I simpy didn’t agree that dark mode constitutes an accessibility feature — because it wasn’t designed as one, and the fact that people are relying on it for access needs is a problem, when its specced design is not up to this job. I guess we’ll see what shakes out, but this growing conflation between “prefers” and “needs” is a concerning source of ambiguity.

2024-12-17 09:51:49 UTC

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What’s your basis for that answer? I don’t claim to know for sure, but I’ve read the legislation and articles discussing this, and it just seems to come down to user customisation requirements. Dark mode is not a form of user customisation, so how could it be required?

2024-12-16 16:05:33 UTC

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Having now read this reply -- the existence of that [data-focus-visible] implies a hack to fix technical debt -- i.e., they know it's not quite right, but they can't change it without breaking backward compatibility, so they give you this hack to fix it yourself.

2024-12-02 17:37:16 UTC

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Yeah absolutely, our world would be very much poorer without art and beauty and the joy it can bring.
But how do you enjoy art that you can't access? How do you enjoy music that only comes in a format you can't play?
I tend to feel that art transcends its medium, like great music still sounds great on a shitty phone speaker. Web art could be like that, and carry its vision irrespective of how it's coded.
This must be possible, but I don't know how.

2024-12-02 17:06:57 UTC

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Well art is inherently self-indulgent, that's how art is born -- "all art is crime" as I think a saying has it, that art by its very nature defies the rules in order to say something new. And this does not chime well with user-focused design.
Design is not art, because design has function. Design can be highly artistic, but its priorities are different. The most accessible sites prioritize user needs, and users don't need artistic design, they need functional design.

2024-12-02 16:57:54 UTC

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Or if the building itself is the art, but the same thing applies, just comes down to whether the artist cares about their audience, and they may not.

2024-12-02 16:56:11 UTC

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Markup is mechanical, and art that deconstructs its mechanics exists only for its own gratification. That’s as artistically valid as anything, art has no functional purpose. But web sites do. It’s like building an art gallery with the street entrance on the second floor and no stairs — that’s fine if you only care about fit competent climbers being able to visit.

2024-12-02 14:54:41 UTC

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Quick look at /03 and it's bad -- links differentiated by color alone, no focus indication other than color change (from black to red, when red is already used for other visual highlighting), misuse of headings and aria-label, and that's quite apart from how hard it is to read sideways text. I stopped looking after that.

2024-10-21 09:43:19 UTC

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David Jason was the captain in the radio series, where the story line got more development compared to the TV version. As you say, every version of the story is different. In the books and radio show, much of Zaphod’s story arc isn’t even in the same universe. 😌

2024-10-13 12:49:28 UTC

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As my brother once said, "Boomers will be remembered as the generation who had the easiest lives in all human history, then screwed it up for everyone else at the end, out of spite." @npub1hfw…pfwr @npub1m3t…jh39

2024-10-13 12:45:24 UTC

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It is curious, and yet maybe inevitable, this perception that the world is more dangerous now, when we actually live in the safest of times for the best part of two millenia. As you say, we're simply far more aware of it now.
Because of the internet. It revealed us to ourselves, and the whole world's consciousness was permanently changed, which we've barely begun to recognize, let alone come to terms with.
@npub1hfw…pfwr @npub1m3t…jh39

2024-10-13 12:29:38 UTC

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It's a tricky one isn't it, when Britain really is broken and the world is going to shit. But that's nothing new, all that seems to vary is the stories and conspiracies told by those who like it this way. It's a truism to say that it's getting increasingly difficult to tell the difference, as the stories become so bizarre in times that there's no way to rationalise around them. Which I suppose is the point (cue Adam Curtis 🙃). @npub1hfw…pfwr @npub1m3t…jh39

2024-10-11 15:17:30 UTC

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We could probably adapt a common saying here: "To someone without a hammer ... what's a nail?"

2024-10-09 15:19:12 UTC

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The best ones are:
* ARC Toolkit (TPGi) -- https://www.tpgi.com/arc-platform/arc-toolkit/
* Axe (Deque) -- https://www.deque.com/axe/
* WAVE (WebAIM) -- https://wave.webaim.org/extension/
My first recommendation would be ARC Toolkit (nb. I work for TPGi so I'm not unbiased here).

2024-09-30 18:35:06 UTC

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Yeah it would be making stuff up, but I mean (literally and figuratively speaking) -- all stuff is made up.
Does it matter if a description only amounts to "what if", if the alternative is no description at all?
The underlying question is about what might be useful for this group of users, but it seems to me that's slightly at odds with a desire for strict empirical accuracy.
So maybe the question is -- what's more important?

2024-09-30 17:34:32 UTC

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Can you imagine what unreal surfaces would feel like? For example, if it’s shiny or rough or looks plasticky, you could mentally conceive of what it might feel like, and then describe that.
You can make it clear in descriptions that you’re talking about virtual content and so the descriptions are speculative, and that would still be of value to a reader who otherwise gets nothing they can relate to.

2024-09-28 15:19:36 UTC

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Do you have polling on what proportion of Mac-based devs know about keyboard navigation?

2024-09-05 12:29:39 UTC

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I've never seen four-digit hex codes before (e.g., `#0000` and `#fff1` in that example). Are those typos, or what is that about?

2024-09-04 15:31:27 UTC

Is it strictly necessary for form fields and labels to have `for/id` association, or is it enough to wrap the `<label>` around the `<input>` ...?
The answer is — Wrapping is enough in theory, but isn’t quite in practice.
https://www.tpgi.com/should-form-labels-be-wrapped-or-separate/
#accessibility #a11y

2024-08-13 11:31:32 UTC

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Bear in mind that only 10% of blind people can actually read Braille, so it's not a panacea. More widely useful would be standardizing the placement of QR codes that can be scanned for product info.