N@ Tarnoff

N@ Tarnoff

@nattarnoff.bsky.social

My initials are recursive! My opinions are my own. And yes I'm holding back.

358 followers78 following1K posts

N@ Tarnoff reposted

Treatler Particle Detector
@brinevapejuice.bsky.social

Not for nothing but PBS does election night coverage and we work really really really hard on it. Union shop as well!

Oliver Darcy@oliverdarcy.bsky.social

Scoop from @brettlogiurato.bsky.social: CBS has sold its local election night coverage to DraftKings, stirring more controversy inside the David Ellison-owned company. Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/cbs-draftk...

status.newsCBS' DraftKings GambleCBS' owned stations will carry DraftKings branding through Election Night, Status has learned, a sponsorship that has stirred concern inside the company.

N@ Tarnoff reposted

Robert Kingett
@weirdwriter.caneandable.social.ap.brid.gy

An Open Letter to Matt Mullenweg on Accessibility in WordPress https://blindaccessjournal.com/2026/10/an-open-letter-to-matt-mullenweg-on-accessibility-in-wordpress/ #Wordpress

blindaccessjournal.comAn Open Letter to Matt Mullenweg on Accessibility in WordPressOctober 18, 2026 Dear Mr. Mullenweg, I am writing to you publicly as a blind daily screen reader user, an IAAP Certified Professional in Web Accessibility (CPWA), and the publisher of Blind Access Journal. Many of our readers, and many of my professional colleagues, are authors, creators, publishers, developers and site owners with disabilities who rely on WordPress every day. I am choosing to make this letter public because the decisions at issue were made in public, they affect a very large community of people, and that community deserves to hear your answers directly. My concern is your recent action on WordPress Trac ticket #50486, “Improve the admin notices accessibility”, and what it signals about the future of accessibility in WordPress. ### What the Ticket Was Meant to Fix Ticket #50486 was opened in 2020 to address a basic barrier. Admin notices in WordPress carry no semantics that identify them to assistive technology. When a notice appears, a screen reader user is not told about it, and a keyboard user has no way to move directly to it. In practice, people like me can miss confirmations, warnings and errors that sighted users see at a glance. The ticket was postponed through many release cycles. Earlier this month, a modest fix was finally committed. It placed notices in a navigable landmark and added a notice count to the page title, which is the first thing a screen reader announces when a page loads. After six years, it represented real progress. ### What Happened Next The change surfaced legitimate technical problems, including notice counts appearing on the Dashboard and in the block editor when no notices were visible, and contributors were actively working through fixes. Refining or reverting an imperfect change is a normal part of software development, and the revert commit that followed explained its technical reasoning clearly. My concern is not that the work was revised. My concern is how the decision was made and what accompanied it. Your first comment on this six-year-old accessibility ticket was an instruction to revert all of the work. In the same comment, you told Andrea Fercia that he no longer holds any WordPress.org positions or authority and was “invited to contribute your talents to another project.” No technical reasoning was offered on the ticket. As reported by The Repository on October 16, you later said in WordPress Slack that you were simply no longer interested in his contributions. I acknowledge that you also apologized for the temporary locking of his account and said that was not your intent. Mr. Fercia has contributed to 33 WordPress releases, has been a core committer for a decade, and is one of the most experienced accessibility specialists the project has had. Removing him in this way, on an accessibility ticket and in the middle of active collaboration on that ticket, sends an unmistakable signal to disabled users and to the people who advocate for us. ### A Pattern That Concerns Our Community This does not stand alone. In August, you declared that the Accessibility Team had overstepped its authority, usefulness and charter, and that any other team or committer could override its suggestions. In 2025, you proposed developing accessibility improvements as a canonical plugin rather than in core. Taken together, these actions make it difficult for disabled users to know whether accessibility remains a core value of WordPress or is now treated as an obstacle to progress. Accessibility cannot be optional for the people who need it. When it lives outside core, or depends on the standing of individual advocates, people with disabilities are the ones left behind. The effect on contributors matters too. Several respected members of the WordPress community have said publicly that they feel unable to speak freely about these events. A project that depends on volunteer and sponsored contributions cannot build accessible software if the people doing that work fear the consequences of doing it. ### Important Questions In the spirit of openness that the WordPress project has long championed, I respectfully ask you to answer the following questions publicly: 1. Do you consider accessibility a core requirement of WordPress, on equal footing with performance, security and usability, rather than an optional enhancement? 2. What is your plan, and the expected timeline, for making admin notices perceivable and navigable for screen reader and keyboard users, now that the work on ticket #50486 has been moved to a future release? 3. What authority and role will the Accessibility Team hold going forward, and how will its expertise be incorporated into decisions that affect disabled users? 4. What process and criteria were applied in removing Andrea Fercia’s roles, and what process will govern similar decisions in the future, consistent with the project’s Code of Conduct? 5. What commitment can you make to authors, creators, developers and site owners with disabilities that the tools they depend on will remain accessible to them? ### An Invitation to Respond WordPress powers a large share of the web, and its choices shape what millions of people, including millions of people with disabilities, can read, publish and build. Clear answers would go a long way toward restoring trust. Should you choose to respond, Blind Access Journal will publish your response in full and without edits, so our readers can hear directly from you. To our readers, and to everyone in the WordPress community who shares these concerns: I encourage you to read The Repository’s reporting and the ticket history for yourselves, and to add your voice respectfully and constructively. Sincerely, Darrell Hilliker, CPWA Publisher, Blind Access Journal

N@ Tarnoff reposted

Frontend Dogma
@frontenddogma.com

Focus Indicators: WCAG Requirements and Best Practices, by @levelaccess.bsky.social: https://www.levelaccess.com/blog/focus-indicators-wcag-requirements-and-best-practices/?ref=frontenddogma.com #accessibility #focus #keyboardnavigation #wcag #bestpractices

levelaccess.comFocus Indicators: WCAG Requirements and CSS Best PracticesA focus indicator marks which element has keyboard focus, and WCAG covers it at two levels. Learn which criteria apply and how to build one in CSS.
N@ Tarnoff
@nattarnoff.bsky.social

Atomic Accessibility Model First presented at 2026 National Association of Government Web Professionals NAGW Title–Beyond the Delay: Building Sustainable Accessibility with Hub-and-Spoke The Math Doesn't Math Picture the average government website. Five thousand pages, give or take — benefits…

tarnoff.infoAtomic Accessibility ModelFirst presented at 2026 National Association of Government Web Professionals NAGW Title–Beyond the Delay: Building Sustainable Accessibility with Hub-and-Spoke The Math Doesn't Math Picture the average government website. Five thousand pages, give or take — benefits portals, transit schedules, court filing systems, permit applications, emergency alert pages. Now picture the accessibility team responsible for all of it. One, two, maybe three people.
N@ Tarnoff
@nattarnoff.bsky.social

We are constantly asking for late night comedians to run for president because they shine a light like no other on the hypocrisy. That doesn’t mean they’d do well. But it doesn’t help that this comedian is currently the frontline leader of a free democratic world.

4fuxake@blueheartedly1.bsky.social

👇👏💙

N@ Tarnoff
@nattarnoff.bsky.social

Exceptions to 1.1.1: When the Alt Text Isn’t the Answer Last week I was at the National Association of Government Web Professionals (NAGW) to present on my atomic hub-and-spoke model (more on this soon). While I was there, I was talking with Rob Carr from the WebAIM team, and we were doing what…

tarnoff.infoExceptions to 1.1.1: When the Alt Text Isn’t the AnswerLast week I was at the National Association of Government Web Professionals (NAGW) to present on my atomic hub-and-spoke model (more on this soon). While I was there, I was talking with Rob Carr from the WebAIM team, and we were doing what two accessibility people do when they get together: complaining. This time it was about educational tools, specifically the people who build them misunderstanding how the exceptions to 1.1.1 work.

N@ Tarnoff reposted

OSINTRadar
@osintradar.bsky.social

🇷🇺🇺🇸The first shipment of Russian diesel is arriving on the US East Coast less than 24 hours after the announcement that sanctions would be lifted. The Russian tanker MINERVA left St. Petersburg, Russia, on September 22 and appears to have been heading toward the US East Coast throughout this time.

N@ Tarnoff
@nattarnoff.bsky.social

Speaking at NAGW this Week Today is Monday, and tomorrow I'll be in Milwaukee for the National Association of Government Web Professionals (NAGW). There are a whole bunch of talks this year on accessibility, including my own. Wednesday 2:30 PM Central Room AB #nagw #a11y #accessibility #speaking…

tarnoff.infoSpeaking at NAGW this WeekToday is Monday, and tomorrow I'll be in Milwaukee for the National Association of Government Web Professionals (NAGW). There are a whole bunch of talks this year on accessibility, including my own. Wednesday 2:30 PM Central Room AB #nagw #a11y #accessibility #speaking #hub-n-spoke
N@ Tarnoff
@nattarnoff.bsky.social

Sometime in the last couple years, I needed to do some transactions via crypto. After all was said and done, I had a balance that wasn't in a good position. This morning around 1 am I was awake and saw I was breaking even after fees to get out. Of course it climbs an additional $2000/coin after.

N@ Tarnoff
@nattarnoff.bsky.social

Looks like I forgot to hit publish on one of my A11y 101 articles. A11y 101 – 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum) You're using a password manager. The site forces you to type the password manually because it doesn't allow clipboard access. Or you're trying to log in. #authentication

tarnoff.infoA11y 101 – 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum)You're using a password manager. The site forces you to type the password manually because it doesn't allow clipboard access. Or you're trying to log in. The site asks you to prove you're not a robot. You click through eight squares showing traffic lights. One has a tiny piece in it. You misclick. Try again. Fail twice more. After ten minutes, you give up planning to try and pay your bills tomorrow.

N@ Tarnoff reposted

404 Media
@404media.co

Executives working on AI at Microsoft and OpenAI admitted what its critics have been saying all along: LLms are predatory pieces of technology that have been built on what a Microsoft executive called “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions.” www.404media.co/doom-loop-op...

404media.co‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft"Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions."
N@ Tarnoff
@nattarnoff.bsky.social

I have these on all my devices. I'm not saying a sticker stops cops, but so far it has allowed me to avoid face scanners in TSA.

Electronic Frontier Foundation@eff.org

You and your friends can say no to the search of your devices with a three-pack of our stickers. shop.eff.org/products/i-...

N@ Tarnoff reposted

Nolan Zugernat
@zugernat.bsky.social

While Ed Sheeran has definitely stumbled and bumbled through this controversy I think the real enemy is Robert Kraft and his fellow NFL owners and we should mostly focus on them.