When we say "shift left" for accessibility people naturally think "earlier." Yes, earlier is important, but this isn't solely about timing. It's about shifting accountability and responsibility to not rest with one role, and make it everyone's job. #accessibility #ShiftLeft

Overwhelm. When I interviewed accessibility pros, I heard that word again and again. In tomorrow's newsletter I'll share my thoughts on overwhelm, my theories on why it happens in the accessibility field, and some strategies that work for me. feather.ca/bsky/tofo

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Derek Featherstone on accessibility and inclusive design, from inside the work.

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I'm spending more time in terminal as I build out projects and get them running on their own. I used non-deterministic Claude to help me create a deterministic mini-dashboard of sorts for getting a run-down of status on where I am with each project.

Our dog... a mini cockapoo. He's very smart, energetic, and playful. And... he appears to like the camera :) We're just back from the final class of his puppy program. It was just as much "new puppy owner training" than it was "puppy training" and that was a perfect mindset shift/reframe.

Your CMS is an authoring tool. Your Design System is an authoring tool. Your AI is an authoring tool, and you likely use it to create additional authoring tools. Your authoring tools need to be accessible, and facilitate the creation of accessible output. www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/

“Let me make it clear: without people at the top of their game sharing their experience and knowledge—regardless of whatever ‘game changing’ technology is in place—we are pulling up the ladders and committing our industry to stagnation and death.” bell.bz/youll-miss-p...

You’ll miss publishers when they’re gone

Ever since Piccalilli started to get traction, I’ve always seen CSS-Tricks, Smashing Magazine and A List Apart (among others) as peers. We all help each other behind the scenes and importantly, back…

bell.bz

I swear... I keep coming up with ways of working in Claude Code that addresses something it doesn't do natively. Within a week, Anthropic releases something that effectively replaces it. I'm accepting that it means: a) I was on the right track, and b) I learned valuable lessons while building.

When I ask my agents "What's next?" it answers in 1 of 2 altitudes: High: "You have 4 other sessions running A, B, C, and D. Your highest priority is B, so that's next." OR Low: "We're paused on X in this session since hh:mm. Want me to pick it up?" I nearly always want the other altitude 🤷

Quick Accessibility Tip: Keyboard. Keyboard. Keyboard. Want to have a massive impact on accessibility for your product, right away? Do sprint demos/reviews with a keyboard only. No mouse. #accessibility #ProductManagement #a11y #inclusion

If you're at the beginning of your journey on accessibility, remember that everyone else is too. Even people that have been doing accessibility work for the last 20+ years... They are still at the beginning of their journey. #accessibility #AlwaysBeLearning #a11y #inclusion

Today's newsletter is focused on a HUGE challenge: being an accessibility Team of One. I'll include Star Wars references, share what Yoda told Luke, and give you my best thoughts on how to thrive when you're... Solo. feather.ca/bsky/tofo

If you are in Apple's ecosystem and you replace a computer named "ABC MacBook Pro" make sure that you DO NOT let your replacement computer also be called "ABC MacBook Pro" The headaches are plentiful, painful, and seemingly perpetual.

Ppl have asked me to do "tear down" videos for accessibility. I recorded one with a friend the other day; it wasn't a "tear down" but more of a "build up" I'm leaning "build up" but maybe it's too nuanced and subtle a difference to matter? What do you think? #accessibility #videos #OverThinking

I don't think anyone is talking about the impact of READING very clearly AI generated prose that is soooooo difficult to decode. The passive voice, the AI constructions and hyphenated-invented-tokenized-terms, and the complexity of what it writes. It's REALLY hard work to read.

Through the entire history of the web... as it morphed from a "utility" into an industry... we've been creating tools and systems that promise to make things faster, more efficient, as we also added complexity. Accessibility has been in the same role for pretty much that entire journey.

What's different here than on LinkedIn? What makes this place unique? How do I even bluesky? All questions I have and will only be able to answer with time.

I'm mining my corpus... as one does, and here's what I'm finding: AI continues to be confused when an older method appears "obsoleted" when there are more modern methods to use. Particularly when the older method still works.

For the past 2.5 weeks I’ve been finalizing renovations to sell our house. I’m surrounded by mini-case studies waiting to be written up about sub-optimal behaviours/implementations that create loads of unintended consequences & inefficiencies to be grappled with later, slowing everything down.

Everywhere I look on socials there’s… a build up of trash. Maybe it’s different here? Maybe it isn’t. I’m not saying much in this post, I realize. This was really about breaking the inertia of not posting.