Writing

• The web needs interactive lists October 8, 2026

  A plea to developers: if this gets created, let's not fuck it up. This is a slightly more spec-heavy post than usual, but hopefully still useful.

• forced-color-adjust: none is an unavoidable foot gun September 17, 2025

  A very long treatise on why text backplates were a bad idea. Most of the time.

• Aria-activedescendant is not focus October 16, 2024

  Who, what, when, where, and why is aria-activedescendant. Or: two focus outlines in a trenchcoat approach you in a dark alley and offer you a combobox.

• An oversimplified guide to setting up Mastodon November 12, 2022

  A very simple step-by-step guide to creating a Mastodon account, with a focus on accessibility.

• Grids Part 2: Semantics January 7, 2021

  A dive into table and grid semantics, why they matter so much to screen readers, and your options for repairing or augmenting basic table markup.

• Grids Part 1: To grid or not to grid July 10, 2020

  The beginning of a series on interactive grid accessibility, starting with a look at when you need a grid, a table, or neither.

• Quick Tips for High Contrast Mode May 26, 2020

  A short article, as a contrast. Just a few simple tips to improve Windows High Contrast Mode experience.

• What's in a name? April 13, 2020

  That which we call a combobox by any other name would have as many bugs.

• Focus management still matters February 27, 2020

  A look at sequential-focus-navigation-starting-point and what it means for focus handling

• Roles and relationships January 21, 2020

  Menus, trees, and grids, oh my! Debugging composite widget semantics with browser devtools.

• <select> your poison January 3, 2020

  The omnibus guide to understanding and making select components and comboboxes

• Playing with state November 4, 2019

  A closer look at play/pause buttons

• Escaping 101 October 11, 2019

  Did you ever want to escape from the humdrum confines of daily life, but weren't sure how? Focus on this article, and learn how to escape a whole plethora of situations! (results not guaranteed, may have unintended side effects)

• Tooltips in the time of WCAG 2.1 August 17, 2019

  A review of the history and current state of tooltip accessibility. Or: everything you didn't know you needed to know before making a tooltip.