Skip to main content

Minimalism and progressive enhancement

Posted in Design and Development

I’ve been enjoying reading though Adam Silver’s archive of articles around accessibility and inclusive design over the past few days, and his take on progressive enhancement really struck a chord:

Progressive enhancement makes us think about what happens when things fail. It allows us to build experiences with resilience baked in. But equally, it makes us think about whether an enhancement is needed at all; and if it is, how best to go about it.

That last sentence is the key for me. It brings Dieter Rams’ tenth principle of good design to mind:

Good design involves as little design as possible

A website should be carefully thought through: every tag, script, style, page, paragraph, and full-stop.

Accessibility in your inbox

I send an accessibility-centric newsletter on the last day of every month, containing:

  • A roundup of the articles I’ve posted
  • A hot pick from my archives
  • Some interesting posts from around the web

I don’t collect any data on when, where or if people open the emails I send them. Your email will only be used to send you newsletters and will never be passed on. You can unsubscribe at any time.

More posts

Here are a couple more posts for you to enjoy. If that’s not enough, have a look at the full list.

  1. Using iframes to embed arbitrary content is probably a bad idea

    The iframe element is a way to embed one website inside of another. Useful for things like maps or videos, but not so much for other content.

  2. Avatars and alt text

    I really enjoyed Nicolas Steenhout’s recent article on Alt text for avatars or user photos. But there is a context where I would break his rule…