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(I often wonder how much the Left's ever-changing vocabulary hurts its ability to work cohesively, for …

A first-hand account of how marking individual words or short, inline phrases as a different language (even when accurate) can be a jarring and inaccessible experience for many screen reader …

Apparently, there has been a discussion around whether the term "user" is in some way derogatory. I must say I don't get it, but I do agree with Heydon: if there is a better, more descriptive, more …

An excellent summary of why providing help with language like "just" or "simply" can be demeaning, rather than …

An excellent breakdown of the linguistic and grammatical differences between the passive and active voice and the similar but distinct simple and …

"Dark pattern" is one of those phrases that could be problematic,  or could just be evocative (there are some obvious race-related issues with equating dark/darker with bad/worse, but …

Today I corrected somebody on the internet. Of course, the correction was entirely warranted because it touched on any area of very specific specialist knowledge of which I inexplicably know enough …

A neat little project that highlights potentially insensitive language used within the provided copy (for English, at …

Colour is tricky, as discussed in this chapter of Figure it Out: Getting from Information to …

The debate around the common practice of naming the primary branch in Git "master" continues, but I thought the statement from WordPress had some interesting points. They largely mirror my own views …

In other words, text speech or a variant on modern emoji speech. Cool/❄ …

A community-led, open-source project attempting to define problematic language (in English) and suggest better replacement terms. Unfortunately, not all listed phrases or words have detailed …

Well, back from trip number two, which was a little more relaxing (though a lot more tiring... I do not understand how bodies work). As a result, I've actually been reading a bunch of stuff, …

I, like just about everyone who has ever heard of it, have been fascinated by the Voynich manuscript for years. The idea of an eldritch textbook, written in an encrypted script and with baffling, …

Migrating assets to a new CMS can be a complete pain, but working out which files go with each page or article on a website doesn't have to be a nightmare if you start with a solid foundation. For me, that means tightly coupling my folder structure on the server with my content structure on the website, a workflow that Craft is particularly nifty at automating.

Craft CMS has the ability to accept environment variables as well as aliases. It can be worthwhile understanding how these two seemingly similar concepts differ, and when you might want to use one over the other.

Having just got back from Sidmouth Folk Festival, I wanted to jot down some of my thoughts about the eleven artists we managed to see whilst the music was still firmly playing in my ears. From the traditional to the modern "nu-folk", we certainly had a great spread of styles, instruments and traditions. Some might even say it was folk'ing awesome!

A look back and a look forward... it must be the start of a new year. 2019 held a lot of change and personal improvement, but I can't help but feel that 2020 is going to be a big one. So what exactly do I have planned and what am I hoping for the next 12 months?

In which I begin by questioning why microformats are defined on the class attribute, instead of somewhere more bespoke, and end up concluding that I don't understand what microformats are actually for... and I'm not sure anyone else does, either.

Well, it only took about a week of dazed puzzling, data tables, and tearing my hair out in clumps, but I think I may finally have a rough content taxonomy for theAdhocracy. A rough first version, that is. Let me explain...

Notes from my second fully remote conference, this time Sparkbox's UnConference. Being able to freely access talks from the US is a rare bonus of everything going on right now, and this did not disappoint. Musical cameos, great talks on UX, accessibility, design systems, and amazing speakers. Great event (despite the time difference).

An interesting thought experiment from Chris: if a client asked you to build a website that could last a minimum of 10 years, what would you do? Lots of influential people in his answers, but I'm …

A great review of the differences and similarities between universal design, inclusive design, and plain old accessibility, from one of the originators of universal design within the web community …

When using Craft in a headless configuration, your entry URIs will default to the wrong domain and won't be properly configured to match your actual site structure, but that can be fixed.

A look at why ARIA should be treated like any other web …

Notes from the 2020 Jamstack Conf. Some interesting dives in the Jamstack community and various applications of Jamstack technologies, with tweet threads as usual.

The three words that spawned the world wide web as we know it; the response from Tim Berners-Lee's supervisor to Tim's initial proposal. Jeremy's talk dives into the history of how the web came to …

A simple idea: collate all your feeds (RSS, ATOM, MF2, whatever) into one place. Marcus suggests a pattern of using the /feeds page (his is here). There have been some valid discussions on the …

I'm still chipping away at getting a review section working. Part of that has been finding a way to automate the calculation of series ratings from individual ratings. Not the hardest equation in the …

Reading notes from Trilobite! Eyewitness to …