Reader's Corner No. 70: Digital Accessibility Compliance, Javascript within the Spotify Desktop App, and Defeating Electron

August 14, 2018

I hope everyone has been keeping up with their reading assignments, because we are on our 70th edition of Reader's Corner! It's not too late to catch up, we've only shared 220 articles over the last year :-) Today we are covering digital accessibility compliance regulations, how JavaScript is used within the Spotify desktop, and defeating Electron (app framework).


Asking about compliance? You may be asking the wrong question

David Minton

Source: Lainey Fieldgold’s Legal Updates

Takeaway: If compliance is the overwhelming motivation for including accessibility in your project, you may be missing the forest for the trees according to the latest post from Lainey Feingold. Accessibility, after all is about enabling people with disability to communicate, and function more independently. If you need to ask if 65% accuracy in video captioning or audio transcription is “good enough” to meet compliance, try reading a document when three out of every ten words is incorrect, and ask yourself if this is the way you desire to communicate with your audience. The answer should be simple.

Tags: #Accessibility, #InternetLaw


How is JavaScript used within the Spotify desktop application?

David Gouch

Source: Quora (Mattias Johansson)

Takeaway: An interesting behind-the-scenes look at the architecture for Spotify’s desktop app. There are often interesting insights when you intentionally take on a uncommon value perspective. In this case, valuing team autonomy over clean product architecture and the elimination of decision making entirely rather than working on consensus.

Tags: #ProductManagement


Defeating Electron

Jay Roberts

Source: Medium

Takeaway: Felix Rieseberg, a Slack engineer, makes the case that the popularity of Electron as an app platform goes beyond trendiness and that anyone dismissing it out of hand should consider what a replacement would need to offer to provide the same features. "If you’ve never had to build an auto-updater, trust that self-updating software is a tricky beast to control." So true, Felix. So true.

Tags: #Programming


Do you have an interesting topic you'd like us to research? Please tell us about it.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.