Michael Schofield

For your next accessibility audit, keep this list close: things will start making sense! 🙌 Let’s look into it 👇 1. Semantic HTML is your friend 2. Keyboard usage is more important than you may think 3. Contrast really shouldn't be a problem we still have in software in 2024 4. Sizing - you shouldn't need a magnifying glass on the web 5. Form-labelling done right is a life-saver 6. Alternative names & text - it's easy, just give more context #accessibility #checklist #audit

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This is a helpful article on how to create accessible calendar tables with abbreviations. It highlights how to use the aria-hidden when using an abbreviation. It also notes that the <abbr> tag is only recognized by VoiceOver on Macs. There are a lot of helpful examples provided. #accessibility https://lnkd.in/gkzXMUxb

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What the heck is ARIA? A Beginner's Guide to ARIA for Accessibility https://buff.ly/3MfEoNz #ARIA #HTML #WebDev #WebDevelopment #DigitalAccessibility #Accessibility #A11y

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Somewhere I have a post that I started with Don Bircher about how to say no. This article does a good job articulating just that as well as the importance of doing it. #productmanagement https://lnkd.in/e2U_t3pm

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Over the years I've tried many approaches to design critiques with the teams I've managed. Without fail these 4 simple principles impact the effectiveness of design critiques greater than anything else when established as ground rules. For presenters: ✦ Describe the problem you're solving ✦ State the target audience* ✦ Specify the feedback you're seeking All of the above can be done in less than a minute, either verbally or in written format. For participants: ✦ Ask questions before comments "I think you should go with blue instead of red" is less effective than first asking "Why did you choose red for this?" The additional context that comes from asking questions will lead to more effective feedback. Design critiques are the easiest and most important thing design teams can do to improve design quality. Alone they are not a silver bullet. But they are the foundation for all other improvements to design quality. If you're not holding regular design critiques (usually weekly), this is step 1 for improving design quality. If you're already holding regular design critiques but not doing the 4 principles above well, this is step 1 for improving your design critiques. Better critiques. Better quality. * "Everyone" is rarely acceptable as the target audience. Even if the feature being presented is intended for everyone, 99% of the time there's a specific segment or archetype you're aiming for. #design #critiques #quality

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This is a really good article about common techniques of browsing the web with only a keyboard. I consider this a prereq for anyone working in the accessibility field. Martin does a beautiful job keeping the concepts simple and straightforward. #Accessibility #Keyboard https://lnkd.in/eQGKbADX

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CXpert Samantha Owyang digs into a basic but important topic in UX: What are UX audits and are they worth doing? Check out our POV on the pros and cons of heuristic audits and when / how we get the most from them. ↙ https://lnkd.in/g-Bk8Bfh

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Mayer's Principles tell us that people learn better when images are timed to audio narration. But how do we design with these principles in mind without sacrificing accessibility? That's the topic of this week's blog post (linked in the comments). Shout out to Cecil Cheng, MEd. and her team for starting this conversation with their interview of Richard Mayer. (There's a link in the post.) Image Description: A person stands on a path below a starry blue sky. To the left is an arrow labeled "Mayer's Principles." To the left is an arrow labeled "Accessibility." Straight ahead is an arrow labeled "No Compromises." #Accessibility #MayersPrinciples #InstructionalDesign

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I saw image zoom feature in some VuePress-driven docs and thought it would be not so hard to make it from scratch in our 11ty driven website. So it is not easy because: - I didn't know about https://lnkd.in/e-rffBJR - <img/> could be inside <picture> - <img/> might have width attribute/style limiting it max size - Shouldn't enlarge small images to 100% of the viewport, but bigger than naturalWidth, naturalHeight - I wanted animation... - what if no naturalWidth? And while working on this I discovered iOS Safari crash on pinch to zoom a page...

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This article provides guidance on the Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) standard 2.4.11, which requires items to not be obscured when they receive focus. #accessibility https://lnkd.in/gN8j9vEK

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I talk with a LOT of companies. What do the fastest sites have in common? They use performance budgets to prevent regressions and deliver a consistently fast user experience. What's a performance budget? This guide covers everything you need to know to get started, including: 🟡 Performance budgets vs performance goals 🟡 Which metrics to track 🟡 Correlate performance metrics with UX & business metrics 🟡 Determine your budget thresholds 🟡 Get buy-in from different stakeholders in your org 🟡 Integrate with your CI/CD process 🟡 Synthesize synthetic & real user monitoring data https://lnkd.in/geen9MDx #webperf #ux #webperformance #sitespeed #pagespeed

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A few months ago I joined a yarn of the month subscription club. Every month I’d receive a box with yarn, a notion of some sort, and a pattern. I haven’t liked what I’ve recieved and decided to cancel. The company behind the subscription service claims all of their yarns and materials are ethically sourced and many are recycled fibers. But the dark patterns they employ in the cancellation flow are antithetical to their stated corporate values. ❌ I counted 4 steps in the workflow that confirm shamed me ❌ Multiple trick questions that almost fooled me into clicking the wrong button ❌ On several screens misdirection was used to highlight the “keep” button and hide the “cancel” button Your UX is a reflection of your corporate values. Truly ethical companies don’t trick their customers and users into doing things that violate their best interest. Next time you look at a workflow, ask yourself some questions about it. 📌 Would I feel confused, pressured or stressed using the workflow? 📌 Woild I understand how to navigate the workflow if I was a novice user? 📌 Does the language used feel unambiguous and clear?

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as #TaylorSwift says: "try and come for my job" 🫶 -- When it comes to UX, the robots still have a lot of work to do to catch up and won't be replacing us humans anytime soon. However - the more you leverage them into existing workflows now, the easier your job becomes overall. Not to mention you'll be able to focus on the things that *really matter* instead of the tasks the robots CAN do well. Which is what we're going to be all about today. 🤘🤖 https://lnkd.in/eVSBXjSn #UserExperience #UX #NNg #NNgUX

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Add discovery to your daily standups. Learn more about avoiding handoffs: https://buff.ly/3BSD01E #ContinuousDiscoveryHabits #AvoidHandoffs #prodmgmt #ux #engineering

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This is one of my all time favorite write ups on agile product management and the nuance between iterative and incremental development. I was actually lucky enough to attend a week of agile training with Jeff Patton many many years ago and it's stuck with me ever since. I've shared this article with just about every product manager and development team I've worked with for the past 15 years. I've observed that just about every dev team tends to default to an incremental development style striving to build every last bell and whistle before even thinking about putting code in production. Invariably, whenever I start working with a new team I challenge them to start thinking about decomposing, organizing, and deploying in a more iterative style. Sketching out broad strokes of the project end to end, getting the code into production, and building up the details sprint over sprint. It can be a tough transition and sometimes takes a while for folks to get their heads around it if they've never worked in this way, but ultimately, in my experience it leads to better outcomes in terms of smoother delivery, better development timelines, less miscommunication and re-work within the team, and better product fit for the customer. https://lnkd.in/gB4MmRrb

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Closing slide from my presentation yesterday on design quality. This is the standard I hold for our industry: Every company large enough to have a CPO or CTO should also have a CDO. The Chief Design Officer (CDO) is most responsible for elevating the quality of the customer experience, with special attention to craft. No other individual should care more about craft and quality, with the exception of the CEO in some cases. If you're actively interviewing for your next role, when you're asked “what questions do you have for me" ask who Design reports into. Follow up by asking how this impacts design quality and craft, and how your role can also impact these. #design #quality #craft

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