The talk recordings of the 2024 WebAIM conference have been published a few days ago and, since I only managed to attend one of the live talks, I was keen to catch up with a couple more in my wishlist.
Here are two of those talks plus an extra wildcard from the 2024 Rails World conference.
The internet is unusable
The first was Nic Steenhout’s “The internet is unusable – The disabled view”.
Here are my talk highlights:
- Accessibility experts are utterly fed up of telling us about the same basic stuff over and over again. Come on fellow devs, listen up! We can do much better than this. If you need a reminder, check out the WebAIM million report.
- Accessibility work is more than going over a WCAG checklist.
- Nothing about us, without us. Meaning: do usability tests with real people with disabilities and for a variety of scenarios.
- No sticky headers or footers.
- Do not limit zoom ratio on mobile.
- Respect the user’s operating system preferences.
Talkin’ tables
The next video was a re-watch of Adrian Roselli’s “Talkin’ Tables”, the only talk I had managed to attend live.
You will want to bookmark this one. It has tones of guidance about:
- complex tables with
colspanorrowspan - table overflow
- responsive tables
- fixed table headers for scrolling
- scroll snapping
- be mindful of text resizing
- labels for selectable rows
- … and so much more
And my key actionable takeaway is:
Do your own testing with as many screenreader + browser combinations as possible.
What’s next?
The last on my wishlist is something completely different from the 2024 Rails World conference.
There’ll be a group discussion about it at work this week, and I’m looking forward to learning from both the talk and my colleagues’ perspectives and experience!
Eileen Uchitelle is a super experienced developer and a great speaker, so it’s promising to be a fantastic watch.
Last but not least
When working in the tech industry, there’s always a lot to keep up with. Please, do not forget that it is impossible to know and do it all!
Self care should also be at the top of your priority list. It is key to avoiding burning the candle at both ends.
I am a lark. So what works for me is to do 1 hour of learning in the morning before work. In whatever shape that takes. It could be at home or on way to the office. It could be watching a talk, reading a book or article, or hacking on some side project. This way, I always have the whole evening to be present for the people I love, off-line hobbies, and those pesky home chores.
And you? What technical talks have you enjoyed lately? How do you learn best? Let us know in a comment below!