2022 (p. 1/4)

The Performance Inequality Gap

infrequently.org

This concept of a “Performance Inequality Gap” brings together so many of my perspectives – from to to inequality as one of the main concerns of the sociologist:
As long as we continue to build only for wealthy users, the dream of […]
#design-for-all
2022

Unpacking 'commercial surveillance': The state of tracking

europarl.europa.eu

Increasingly stakeholders submit that EU data protection rules jeopardise Europe’s data-driven prosperity and demand targeted weakening of data protection rules. As the debate becomes more polarised, it is more important than ever to […]
2022

These ‘Luddite’ Teens Are Abstaining From Social Media

nytimes.com

The Luddite Club is a high school group in Brooklyn promoting “a lifestyle of self-liberation from social media and technology”. This NYT article introduces these self-described teenage misfits who choose to engage critically with media (all the […]
2022

The Dangers of Elite Projection

humantransit.org

Jarrett Walker describes “Elite projection” as “the belief, among relatively fortunate and influential people, that what those people find convenient or attractive is good for the society as a whole”. Walker talks about this concept […]
#design-for-all
2022

Do No Harm Guide: Centering Accessibility in Data Visualization

urban.org

With great interest, I discovered the comprehensive guide "Centering Accessibility in Data Visualization" by Urban Institute: it approaches the topic from general considerations on the role of #a11y in process and artifact, diving all the way into specific examples showcasing how things should be done in an inclusive way.
#design-for-all
2022

Drowning in AI Generated Garbage : the silent war we are fighting

ploum.net

This text by Lionel Dricot made my morning, amidst all the current hype of how incredibly great ChatGPT and the latest developments in AI are:
While they are exciting because they are new, those creations are basically random statistical noise […]
2022

Attack vectors to re-identify individuals from the anonymised Smittestopp dataset

nrkbeta.no

There are plenty of examples about re-identification, the identification of an individual from a supposedly “anonymized” data set. In this latest – absolutely fascinating – case, Hagen Echzell demonstrates (PDF) how it is possible to locate […]
2022

Accessibility in action: Josh Collinsworth's "reduce motion" button

This is inclusive design in action: while some users may have set a permanent preference to disable motion, enabling a simple switch for a motion-heavy website is a great feature.
#design-for-all
2022

This website is now a Fediverse citizen

A mass exodus has seemingly started from Twitter, as people leave the sinking ship. I haven’t been active on Twitter in a long time, but with Mastodon/Fediverse gaining some traction I feel the appeal of embracing this “open web”-based way […]
2022

‘Meet the people clinging on to old tech – from faxes to VCRs

theguardian.com

Ah, this is just down my alley regarding , luddism and related perspectives: This article tells the stories of people who consciously resist new technology in favour of older versions. The reasons are manifold, but a lot of it has to do with ownership […]
2022

TeamViewer installs suspicious font only useful for web fingerprinting

ctrl.blog

Browser manufacturers are in a constant battle of finding ways to protect users from being fingerprinted by websites they use. I just recently was very surprised to visit an online store (with emptied local storage, all cookies deleted, and trackers […]
2022

Why it's time to update our language about bad design patterns

amyhupe.co.uk

As much as I am fascinated by the subject, and passionate about promoting that it is an abuse of designers’ power of influencing people’s behaviour, I deeply dislike the term “dark patterns”. Enough so, to dedicate an entire page in my […]
2022

MastodonDataProtectionGuidance

codeberg.org

A collection of guides, templates, and tools for Mastodon and other Fediverse Admins / users, written from a data protection perspective.
This repository by Carey Lening, Data Protection Consultant, researcher, and Mastodon instance […]
2022

Robin Berjon on the risk of Twitter embeds

mastodon.social

Robin Berjon points out how having Tweets embedded in websites is – like most “embeds” – a risk in terms of security (for the end users, mostly, but in theory also for a website itself), but also carries the risk of extracting meaning from […]
2022

Is the fediverse about to get Fryed? (Or, “Why every toot is also a potential denial of service attack”)

ar.al

Aral Balkan presents an example how the massive amount of communication involved with federation can turn operating a Mastodon instance into a liability.
[…] you see, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. And, on the fediverse […]
2022

Charts.css

chartscss.org

Charts.css is a modern CSS framework. It uses CSS utility classes to style HTML elements as charts.
A brilliant idea: Charts.css turns semantically marked-up data tables into visualizations using various types of graphs, and all […]
#design-for-all
2022

Just as privacy statements, accessibility statements are part of UX design

Mandated by law under certain circumstances, but always good practice and a sign of inclusive thinking, accessibility statements (and placing them in a navigation scheme) may sometimes be considered merely a compliance chore rather than a subject of good design themselves. In an article on the Deque blog, Patrick Sturdivant highlights a personal perspective on how important a part of UX such statement can be.
#design-for-all
2022

My Grandma is Not a Cyborg

futuress.org

The story of early fighter planes designed for an idealized body type leading to about 90% of accidents due to operational issues is well known to anybody who ever attended a university class in usability, ergonomics, or “human factors”. Sinem […]
#design-for-all #design
2022

Punkt. MP02 Pigeon

punkt.ch

The Punkt MP02 is marketed as a “voicephone” – a 4G mobile device that is stripped down to the very bare functionalities of voice, text and serving as a hotspot for a tablet or PC. It’s not just a cool example of a very minimalist product […]
2022

Privacy Pledge

privacy-pledge.com

Meet the Privacy Pledge – a simple list of five key principles, designed as a commitment by those signing it:
We, the undersigned, commit ourselves to rebuilding the internet so that it returns to the ideals set out by its founders: a […]
2022

Joschi Kuphal: #Unicode #LinkedIn #assistive

linkedin.com

“Formatting” social media posts by using special unicode characters (that, for example, look like bold text but aren’t) is one of the most common ways to create completely inaccessible social media posts. Joschi Kuphal’s screencast […]
#design-for-all
2022

Privacy as Product

berjon.com

Privacy is a strategic product concern that is key to digital businesses and should be treated as such, not a nuisance to be lawyered away with wobbly incantations.
Robin Berjon’s critique of the “underdeveloped and […]
2022
Detail view of some of the schedule booklets, with colours used in apparently no consistent manner

Otl Aicher at Bröhan-Museum

2022

I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message

nytimes.com

“McLuhan’s view is that mediums matter more than content; it’s the common rules that govern all creation and consumption across a medium that change people and society. Oral culture teaches us to think one way, written culture another […]
2022

The Optional Chaining Operator, 'Modern' Browsers, and My Mom

blog.jim-nielsen.com

These are the kind of stories that would deserve so much more space in education and practice of technologists:
The real-life impact of our technical decisions really hit home to me once again: my Mom had trouble volunteering and participating in […]
#design-for-all
2022