June 23, 2021 — Automated testing is an important part of any software project, including testing for accessibility. There are already tools for linting and integration testing accessibility, but what about end-to-end testing with real assistive technology? Since I hadn’t seen this before, I set out to build Auto VO, a driver for the VoiceOver screen reader. Read more…

June 22, 2021 — After years of innovation in both tools and processes, the struggle between design and development is still real. This article focuses on the best practices for improving the design to development processes and how cutting-edge solutions, such as UXPin powered by Merge technology, can help in facilitating the change. Read more…

June 21, 2021 — Do you have to process data manually because it is served through images or scanned documents? An image-to-text conversion makes it possible to extract text from images to automate the processing of texts on images, videos, and scanned documents. In this article, we look at how to convert an image to text with React and Tesseract.js(OCR), preprocess images, and deal with the limitations of Tesseract (OCR). Read more…

June 18, 2021 — Voice assistants are currently the most popular use case for voice user interfaces. However, because voice assistants give feedback by talking to the user, assistants can only solve simple user tasks such as setting an alarm or playing music. In order for voice user interfaces to really break through, feedback to the user must be visual instead of auditive. Read more…

June 18, 2021 — Next.js has a file-based routing system in which each page automatically becomes a route based on its file name. Each page is a default exported React component from the pages directory that can be used to define the most common route patterns. This article will guide you through almost everything you need to know about Routing in Next.js and point you in the direction of related topics and concepts. Read more…

June 17, 2021 — Image placement on the modern web is highly intentional, helping to communicate the overall purpose of a page or view. This means that nearly every image you declare needs to have an alternate description. Nulling an image indicates that it is for decorative purposes only. In this context, decorative means that the image does not visually communicate information that is important to understanding the purpose of the page or view, and why the image is included as a part of that. Read more…

June 16, 2021 — In a new short series of posts, we highlight some of the useful tools and techniques for developers and designers. Recently we’ve covered HTML Emails and SVG Generators. This time we look into different kinds of tools to help you streamline your accessibility testing process. Don’t miss the next one. Read more…

June 15, 2021 — When developing themes and plugins for WordPress, we need to test them in different environments. How can we create multiple testing sites on our computer, quickly and easily, without having to become a sysadmin? If our themes and plugins contain custom blocks, testing them for all different versions is imperative. At the very minimum, we need to worry about two versions of Gutenberg: the one shipped in WordPress core, and the one available as a standalone plugin. Read more…

June 15, 2021 — In this episode of the Smashing Podcast, we’re talking about image optimization. What steps should we follow for performant images in 2021? We talk to expert Addy Osmani to find out. Read more…

June 14, 2021 — Spoiler alert: tooltips, modals, tabs, carousels, and dropdown menus are some of the user interface components that require more than CSS. To ensure accessibility of your interface, JavaScript is a necessary addition to accomplish focus management, respond to keyboard events, and toggle ARIA attributes. Read more…