Universal Design, Accessibility and the Streets of Lima, Peru

Two small busses on the street at night.
© Dave Nold

Strolling through San Isidro, a municipality of Lima, Peru, you get the impression that they had accessibility in mind. Curb cuts on every corner, ramps leading into stores, restaurants and some private homes. And plenty of clearly marked blue spots for parking. I wonder how strictly the parking was enforced since when crossing the street I learned that Stop signs are more of a suggestion.
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WordPress 4.7 Beta 2 and Twenty Seventeen

That’s what you’re looking at.

(At the time of this writing.)

Just installed it and I’m very pleased so far.

The default WordPress themes have been very good, accessibility wise, for some time now and I’m always exited to try out “this year’s model”.

Thanks to the folks at the WordPress Accessibility Team you can use the accessibility-ready tag along with one-column, two-columns, right-sidebar, flexible-header and the like when you’re searching for a new theme for your site. In fact, please use the accessibility-ready tag when you’re searching for a new theme for your site.

As Joe Biden would say, “this is a big fucking deal.” Everything should be Accessibility Ready.

Body shaming the Web

Maciej Ceglowski has posted the transcript of the excellent and very funny talk he gave at Web Directions.

There are brief synopses of classic works of Russian literature as well as a discussion of the 21st century ailment: “chickenshit minimalism.”

But the problem is serious:

“If present trends continue, there is the real chance that articles warning about page bloat could exceed 5 megabytes in size by 2020.”

Bloat is no joke. My dog died from it last year. It came on suddenly and within two hours she was gone. I loved that dog.

Don’t let the same thing happen to the web.

Act now. The website you save may be your own.