Since December, there’s a been a surprising amount of buzz around neomorphism, touting it as the great visual design trend of 2020. In case you’ve been hibernating and haven’t seen any of the hype, neomorphism is a design trendlet where very subtle gradients are used to denote layout elements. It’s…

It’s all too easy to make year-end predictions for 2020, because not a whole lot will happen that’s different from years past. The real fun, however, is in trying to look ahead an entire decade… that’s where things get a little wild. Whole business ecosystems will come and go, new…

Most of today’s software is built using components that don’t meet the legal standards for accessibility. Here’s a blueprint for quality labeling and for the community to support it. — The world before labeling standards If we were to travel back to an era before standards for food and drug labeling, we’d find a thriving market for patent medicines and tuberculosis-laden milk. Tonics containing cocaine, morphine, heroin, and other opiates were sold without restriction. Toxic chemicals were widely used as food dyes. …

We have a long road ahead to an Accessible Web, and it comes with a significant backlog of work to be done. However, today’s development practices ensure that this backlog will grow exponentially — unless we measure it and address it soon. — The Accessibility Deficit Over the past few years, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have emerged as the legal standard that all websites should adhere to in the US. However, virtually every live website or application has accessibility issues that keep it from being 100% compliant with WCAG guidelines.

For less than the price of two lattes, you can set yourself up with a testing lab that will allow you to fix most issues before they get you in trouble. — In my job managing accessibility testing for a handful of major cruise lines, we make extensive use of enterprise-grade testing tools that catch the low-hanging fruit of accessibility violations. These applications are great for analyzing a large volume of pages and for tracking progress over time.

The US Department of Justice will take a pass on taking a leadership role in creating guidelines for accessibility standards for now. — Up until now, the Department had set expectations for publishing a set of much-anticipated public website regulatory guidelines in early 2018. As a result, the legal standard for web accessibility in the US will most likely be set by a Federal judge deciding an accessibility lawsuit like Gil v. Winn-Dixie.

This month, a Federal judge ruled in favor of a Florida man with blindness who sued the supermarket chain Winn Dixie for violating the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) on its website. — I came across this story a couple of weeks ago, and I’m surprised at how little play it’s gotten in the web design press, given how significant it could be. …

After 20+ years designing apps and web sites, I figured that I knew more than enough about web accessibility. — I knew how to keep my designs accessible: I was a seasoned web designer/developer that followed industry best practices — you know, those that are published in developer blogs and the industry press. It wasn’t difficult to call myself an expert. After I knew more about the subject than anyone…