You’ve heard it before: there is not enough diversity in tech. But Carie Fisher offers one solution you may not have heard: that focusing on accessibility may be key in making the tech world itself more accessible.
Articles
Responsible JavaScript: Part II
Web development is hard. We don’t always get it right on the first try. Fortunately, we don’t have to get everything perfect from the start. Jeremy Wagner provides some helpful ways to start recovering from our collective JavaScript hangover.
Resilient Management, An Excerpt
Great managers ensure their teams are successful and that team members grow in their careers. In this excerpt from her new book, Resilient Management, Lara Hogan discusses how to do this by mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring them.
Daily Ethical Design
There’s no shortage of content, manifestos, and opinions these days on how design can be evil. But if they’ve left you feeling more frustrated than empowered, wishing for practical, real-world ways to enact change in your work, we hear you. In this piece, Lennart Overkamp lays out a practice-based approach to daily ethical design. You might be surprised to find out how much you can already do.
Trans-inclusive Design
Design decisions across our projects can mean the difference between affirmation and invalidation—and sometimes safety and danger. Erin White explores the repercussions for trans, non-binary, and gender-variant users and what we can do about it.
Everyday Information Architecture: Auditing for Structure
To rebuild a system, we must understand it. Enter the structural audit: a review of the site focused solely on its menus, links, flows, and hierarchies. Lisa Maria Martin explains in this excerpt from her new A Book Apart book, Everyday Information Architecture.
Nothing Fails Like Success
Money and tech have a complicated relationship. We trained our users to expect things for free. Quickly we realized that wasn’t a sustainable business model, so we sold their data and served ads, which invites its own problems.
Now, we’re trying to undo this tangled web. How do we get back to a democratized web? Our own Jeffrey Zeldman invites us to discuss how and to #LetsFixThis.
Accessibility for Vestibular Disorders: How My Temporary Disability Changed My Perspective
Developer Facundo Corradini shares how his temporary disability taught him about why accessibility testing is so important. Focused on vestibular disorders, he both shares best practices to create sites that avoid triggering symptoms and informs us of the potential impact.
Responsible JavaScript: Part I
The web is drowning in a sea of JavaScript, awash with unnecessary bloat, inaccessible cruft, and unsustainable patterns. Jeremy Wagner plots a course to navigate the JavaScript Sea responsibly by building the right things the right way and using the web platform the way it was meant to be used.
Canary in a Coal Mine: How Tech Provides Platforms for Hate
Like a mine can fill up with toxic gasses, technology can become a toxic platform for hate. As the people building the web, we have an ethical responsibility for how these products are used—whether we intended it or not. ALA’s own Tatiana Mac lays this out using her own experience as a woman of color in tech.
