#i THINK the bottom text says something about voiceovers being bad

[thatludicrousdisplay]

internal monologue: IT Crowd s1ep4

okay this one is my favourite episode of s1 definitely 

i can no longer hear the start of “another brick in the wall (pt 2)” without hearing moss’ voice in my head going “yes you do, you just used a double negative” 

“what.......... what’s wrong with my eyes?”

the next mug i want is one of the one with moss’ face on the bottom of it because i have a reynholm industries one

I LOVE MOSS SO MUCH he so loves roy

“what is wrong with my eyes???”

roy stealing the monitor omg

MOSS IS SO EXCITED ABOUT THE MUG AND THE PICTURE AND I JUST *screaming*

“everyone except muggins here!” 

“can i ask you two a question” “please christ yes”

moss sweetie use a coaster please

“DON’T GOOGLE THE QUESTION MOSS”

roy falling over again YES 

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww the chicks in moss’ cd tray, we all know he’s feeding them everyday

THE FACT THE PICTURE ISN’T THERE MAKES IT BETTER 

“this isn’t my cup!” 

i agree with roy here, i too “don’t like goats anything. i don’t like goats being involved in any stage of the food production process” 

MOSS WITH THE DESSERT HE’S SO CUTE

*crashing* “NOTHING” no not sus at all

roy making shit up again will never get all

see: “yes computer plange” 

THE WHOLE ECOSYSTEM BIT WITH MOSS IN THE BACKGROUND OH MY GOD COMEDIC FUCKING GENIUS 

jen is watching them so seriously aswell 

the two of them nodding at each other my loves 

“YOU’RE KILLING THE RAINFOREST”

roy maybe stop with the sexually suggestive hand movements???

jen annoying roy into going upstairs is my mother making me do stuff

ROY GESTURING TO MOSS OMG

the fact the first thing roy does is actually check what he asks people is the best

oh poor old roy stuck under the desk, that is what we don’t have loud music people

I LOVE HIM SITTING THERE LOOKING ALL PANICKED 

the way jen’s face falls when she realises moss is laughing about nerdy shit

“roy’s stuck under a desk” 

the fact moss has to check it’s a weird text

“i best investigate!” 

(quick note: there was a deleted scene here where moss kept jumping in trying to catch jen, the first time yelling “aha!” and then ranting about the band, then “busted!” and saying about that band, and then finally ending with “i can’t think of a band but don’t go behind the red door please”, and i wish they’d kept it in because it’s hilarious)

the dramatics of jen going towards the door oml

are we watching a trashy teen vampire series now??? okay then

RICHMOND YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

“i startled you” *creepy smile*

richmond has been here for all of 30 seconds and i already love them

“i don’t know their names” 

oh my god the whole light rant is me when i get really into something and someone finally asks me about it

“wow. it’s obvious you’re going mad” 

YES RICHMOND WITH MOSS’ MUG (also i still want one of those mugs really bad)

“this is........ this is my punishment” 

*lil twirl* “do i amaze you” once again comedy gold 

the whole bleeding bit is incredible

THE STARING INTO THE CAMERA I LOVE IT

also the flashback is awesome and the voiceover is so funny

“it’s quite a long story actually” “really? nevermind then” 

MOSS POKING HIS HEAD ROUND THE CORNER SO CUTE

moss trying to get people to, like, do stuff was obviously destined for failure but the fact roy contacted him first is incredible

i love as we watch roy realise he’s made a pretty terrible decision 

“well you have no.......... interest in the world” 

THE WAY MOSS IS JUST MOUTHING STUFF AT HIM AND ROY JUST MOUTHS “rubbish!” 

“why don’t you see any cockney goths!?” 

richmond is just awesome and all of the scenes with them in are incredible

the fact richmond is so confused about why people weren’t paying attention

“richmond’s out of his room, he’s supposed to be in his room, why is he out of his room, he’s supposed to be in his room” THE WAY HE’S STANDING 

THE WHOLE “desk grabbit” THING IS ONE OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS EVER 

“hullo richmond. how are things?” “oh you know... not brilliant”

poor old roy he looks so depressed

of course jen knows what to do the boys would die without her 

WHY DOES HE CRAWL OUT LIKE THAT

also THE BUILDER 

the way roy doesn’t realise that richmond is out for a moment because he’s so concerned about moss i love it

“i think you should ask him about the funeral..........”

“i’m just enjoying this cup of tea” *giggles like a maniac* THIS IS ONE MY FAVOURITE GAGS ITS SO SIMPLE BUT I LOVE IT

“goths are people too” 

EYYYY DEYNHOLM WITH THE MUG

richmond stop making moss all depressed!!!!

honestly i just wanna hug moss here 

“RICHMOND” the way they just.............. jump

ROY WITH THE BRUSH I LOVE IT, AND THE WAY JEN TAKES IT

here we are more staring at the camera lmao

THE WAY EVERYONE LEANS IN TRYNA FIGURE OUT WHAT HE’S LOOKING AT 

“thank you, wash your bloody hands!” 2020/2021 in a nutshell

“it sounds horrible but it’s actually quite beautiful” 

DEYHOLM’S FACE 

the way jen wrestles the phone off moss is *squealing*

THE STARING 

“wHaT iS It!?!?!?!!?” 

awwwwww yay deynholm wants richmond back!!!!

once again richmond deserves the world and deynholm needs to stop being so damn changeable lmao

“yes, and leave me alone, ya goblin!” me at my most hated teachers 

THE WHOLE MILKY LENS BIT I LOVE IT

richmond tryna get the milky lens back looks like me tryna figure shit out

“told ya it was a window” roy is so passive aggressive

RICHMOND WITH THE SUNLIGHT 

“thank god” that’s fair enough lol

what is behind the green door???????????? did jen ever go behind it????????????????? i wanna know!!!

MOSS LOOKING FOR HIS MUG YES we all know he was there for hours 

#it crowd #the it crowd #moss #maurice moss #roy #roy trenneman #jen #jen barber #deynholm reynholm #richmond #richmond avenal #internal monologue #s1ep4 the red door #this is one of my favourite episodes

[rosalyn51]

'A Discovery of Witches': TV Review

by Daniel Fienberg, Jan 16, 2019

Bottom Line

Matthew Goode flairs his nostrils and Lindsay Duncan eats a fox.

Deborah Harkness' best-seller about vampires, witches and academic research into the field of alchemy comes to Sundance Now and Shudder with its interspecies swooning intact.

Early in the premiere of Sundance Now and Shudder's adaptation of Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches, main character Diana Bishop gives a lecture on alchemy in front of an enraptured room of Oxford academics. As she is a visiting lecturer of some repute, the scene is designed to show her intelligence and her expertise and to introduce the alchemical fascination that's central to Harkness' books.

Except that for purposes of TV, A Discovery of Witches almost couldn't care less. The lecture is reduced to a montage, a series of half-observations that add up to nothing. Its purpose is sheer expediency, something that series adapter Kate Brooke knows audiences will expect on a fundamental level, but not one that the show wants to deal with on a utilitarian level.

In hasty fashion, it points to everything good and bad about the TV adaptation of A Discovery of Witches, which proves both better and worse than Harkness' book, already a piece of flawed supernatural romance occupying the breathless space somewhere between Twilight and Outlander.

Teresa Palmer plays Diana, an American scientific historian doing research in Oxford. Diana is also a witch, the reluctant heir to a legacy dating back to Salem and beyond. Other than performing menial tasks, Diana avoids using her magic, or at least she thinks she does. Working in the Bodleian Library one day, Diana discovers a previously unrecorded manuscript — drink every time a character says "Ashmole 782" and you will die — that may be tied to her work. It may be tied to far greater things, though. Soon, other mystical creatures begin to take an interest, including Matthew Clairmont (Matthew Goode), an ancient vampire and professor of biochemistry. Matthew believes that Ashmole 782 may be the famous Book of Life, a text documenting the origins of witches, vampires and daemons, a tome that could offer secrets essential to all species.

Diana doesn't want anything to do with Matthew. He's a vampire. But he's also dreamy as heck, especially when he starts sniffing her. Matthew begins to look even better in comparison to ultra-ominous witch Peter Knox (Owen Teale), part of the shady Congregation, a Venice-based group taxed with maintaining balance between creatures and humans. Very quickly, Diana's life is in danger, as is her virtue since things with Matthew begin to get all hot-and-heavy in ways that may threaten that exact balance the Congregation is meant to keep. Oh, and Diana is also about to discover that that magic she's been keeping at bay is about to start exploding out of her every orifice. Like... literally!

There's an audience for tales of this nature. I doubt it's the audience that watches Shudder, since Discovery of Witches isn't even the slightest bit scary. And is it the Sundance Now audience? I'm not sure I fully grasp the Sundance Now brand. Qualitatively, the series also occupies that space between Twilight and Outlander.

Going back to that early lecture scene and the task of adapting entrusted to Brooke, whose credits include Mr. Selfridge and The Forsyte Saga.

On the page, Diana is a tough character. I don't love the online-friendly pejorative "Mary Sue," referring to generally female characters of disproportionate and unexplained proficiency, but Diana is dangerously close. She isn't just a witch. She is, despite absolute resistance to her powers, eventually the best darn witch in the world. The last half of the book is at least 10 percent characters telling Diana, "I didn't know you could do that!" and her replying "I didn't know either!" But what Diana has going for her is basically two things: She's the primary narrator of the book, so she almost always has a voice and perspective that steer the story, and she's brainy in ways that are frequently coming in handy and frequently astounding everybody around her.

In the series, Brooke has taken the focal perspective away. Matthew now gets the introductory voiceover that opens each episode and we're never allowed inside Diana's head for a second. Also, her alchemical training is virtually meaningless. Until her loins take over, it's work that drives both Diana and the narrative through much of the book. Here, she's really got nothing. I doubt viewers are going to suffer, but Palmer does. Diana has no voice and she's barely a character other than staring at Matthew first in terror, then in curiosity and then in boundless love. Throw in an accent that waxes and wanes with Diana's emotions and it's really not a decisive performance.

It becomes much more Goode's series and, if we're being perfectly honest, it's probably the better for it and surely the more satisfying to its target audience. In this series, vampires are ever flaring their nostrils at delectable passing human morsels, and Goode does it like a champ. He also drinks a lot of wine, albeit without Matthew Rhys. That's a The Wine Show joke. The series has Matthew drinking a lot of wine because it's something he does non-stop in the book. I can only assume this is meant as a burn on Bram "I Never Drink… Wine" Stoker and his version of vampirism.

If making Diana even more of a Mary Sue than she was on the page is a bad adaptive choice — don't get me started on Diana as a character only being activated by the sexual ritual known blushingly as "bundling" — Brooke smartly recognizes the dramatic structural flaws of Harkness' book, in which the first half alternates between Diana and Matthew going for tea, Diana doing her research, Matthew stalking Diana creepily and sometimes, for no reason, supernatural creature yoga. There are almost no other characters.

Brooke wisely pushes up the presence and prominence of supporting characters like Matthew's "son" Marcus (a very good Edward Bluemel), tormented Finnish witch Satu (a chilling Malin Buska), obsessive vampire Juliette (visually striking Elarica Johnson) and research-loving daemons Nathaniel (Daniel Ezra, sans All-American accent) and Sophie (Aisling Loftus). Some of these characters pop up for one or two scenes late in the book, with no context or value. Here they're actual characters. They aren't always successfully introduced, mind you. I defy anybody who hasn't read the book to watch the series and tell me what a "daemon" even is, much less what their powers might or might not be.

Teale, Castle Black dickhead Ser Alliser Thorne to Game of Thrones fans, benefits particularly from Knox's expanded screen time, giving probably the series' best performance. His closest rival is Lindsay Duncan as Matthew's vampire mama Ysabeau, who hasn't been given an expanded story, but does get to attack and eat a fox onscreen, making Discovery of Witches the first show of the Peak TV era to feature Tony winner Duncan, CBE, attacking and eating a fox.

Brooke also takes the series to Venice, not a part of the first book, and Venice looks spectacular. In fact, even if you aren't at all interested in forbidden supernatural romance, the directors — Juan Carlos Medina, Alice Troughton and Sarah Walker — make gorgeous use of filming locations in Oxford and Venice and Scotland. You might giggle hysterically at some of the limitedly realized supernatural stuff — Goode running in accelerated motion after a CGI stag is empirically hilarious and I defy anybody to tell me otherwise — and still enjoy the series as a photogenic travelogue. The shifting of locations and ability to tell stories in multiple locations makes the series feel less landlocked.

A Discovery of Witches picks up as it goes along through eight episodes. There's torture and foreplay and increasingly more magic. Only the finale is a bit of an anti-climax, setting the tables for two additional already ordered seasons, but I think the cliffhanger at the end of the finale will raise enough questions to keep viewers who make it that far curious.

Cast: Teresa Palmer, Matthew Goode, Edward Bluemel, Louise Brealey, Malin Buska, Aiysha Hart, Owen Teale Alex Kingston, Valarie Pettiford, Trevor Eve, Lindsay Duncan Creator: Kate Brooke, adapted from the book by Deborah Harkness Premieres: Thursday (Sundance Now and Shudder)

#matthew goode #matthew clairmont #teresa palmer #alex kingston #a discovery of witches

[moonlightreal]

Winx Club season 8/8

In which we find new things and old things, and I find far too many non-Winx things to reference.

8 Into the Depths of Andros

Ocean!  Fishies!  An underwater castle glowing with light!  Merlumens!  They’re all pink, with blonde hair and shell headbands.  Valtor voiceovers that this is the “Paradise of Andros, so strong, so filled with light, thanks to the suboceanic star, Gorgo.”

Ok.  First, what IS a star in the magic dimension?  I suppose “star” has two meanings, one being the traditional mass of incandescent gas around which planets orbit, the other being… uh, any place that lumens have a star core.  So stars can be planets, or ON a planet like this star is, or on a moving ship.  I wish we had some more specific terminology instead of using the same name for all these different situations!  Ok, so star=where there’s lumens.  Gorgo doesn’t even provide light in space, since it’s at the bottom of the ocean.

I can’t help thinking of Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer.  That movie was about Spectra the diamond star, a diamond through which all the universe’s light passed.  An evil space princess was trying to steal it because diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and the fading of the light made everybody stop caring about things.  Obviously this movie made a big impression and I so want to work it in to Mirta’s season 8 story, somehow...

My other question: Merlumens and selkies.  Are they related?  Do they get along?    

Anyway, the merlumens are hangin’ out playing with their fish friends and being cute while Valtor watches from his asteroid, plotting their doom!  He gloats that his power has grown, and it seems it has; he created a big all-over image of the lumens instead of the little magic-TV he was using before.  But he wants a fish friend too!  He conjures a hammerhead shark and morphs it into a big monster shark I’m gonna call a sharkee because maybe someone somewhere will get that reference.  

Valtor is interrupted mid-gloat by Obscuro popping out of a portal behind him and hitting him in the back of the head.  The little guy is wearing fins and a swim floaty because of course he is.

Valtor regrets his choice of minions and Obscuro complains that he’s bad at swimming.

On Andros, Aisha is practicing a speech while Stella adjusts her dress.  It is a gorgeous dress, seafoam green with taffeta and cool chokers and flowers in her hair.  She’s going to present this speech at the anniversary of the founding of Andros, but she’s having trouble getting it perfect.  The girls are helping her practice.

Nex calls with cheering-you-on emojis and Aisha says, “He’s trying to support me every way he can.”

Aisha continues trying to practice but Nex texts again, then Stella interrupts to say the dress needs flowers, then Nex calls and Aisha tosses the phone ‘cause she’s gotta practice.  She leaves her room… and finds Nex in the corridor with flowers and more support, but poor Aisha just needs some quiet!

Nex’s outfit is pretty great too. Moss-green jacket with gold details and a gold cord around the waist. It looks military, or princely.  But Nex doesn’t seem to be a prince.  We don’t acutally know anything about where he’s from, do we?  Just that he was a “paladin” whatever that means in this context, he wasn’t a student at Red Fountain with the others but the season 8 timeshift put him as one of the Specialists on Sky’s team.  We can assume Nex and Thoren attended a different school for heroes since they know magical combat but that’s about it.

Aisha brushes past Nex, focused on her speech, and he looks sad but doesn’t go after her.

Meanwhile at Gorgo, staryums attack the underwater star core!  Merlumens see them and swim away.  Obscurum gloats.

Back at the palace, nobles arrive for the celebration!  There’s a pavilion set up outside the palace proper, over what must be a lagoon.  Inside is a land platform for the humans and half lake for the mermaids.  Queen Ligeia is there in a cool floating shell throne, with a dozen cute mermaids and mermen. Tressa and Nereus do not appear.  Maybe they’re on a diplomatic mission somewhere else.

Nervous Aisha approaches the podium where her parents wait.  Nobles applaud.  Nex and the Winx give her thumbs-up.  Aisha begins her speech, and namechecks her parents and Queen Ligeia—and “Dorana, Queen of the Stars.”  And there’s little Dorana, floating along.

(Maybe Dorana is to the lumens what Omnia was to the selkies?  Some kind of higher form or guiding spirit or something.)

Aisha begins her speech.  “I’ve been to space, I’ve seen the stars.  But here, on Andros… um...” sigh.  She flubs it.  King Teredor looks SUPER disappointed.  Niobe steps in to help her daughter along, and they get the speech done. Then we find out what else is up: Ligeia’s ocean magic and Dorana’s star magic together can protect Andros from the threat of Valtor. Bloom says he has no chance against the combined magic.

Dorana; “When Valtor showed up my brother Argen suddenly disappeared.”

Hmm!  I wonder what could have happened to him!

This is a surprise to the Winx-- it’s news to me too, but since I’m not genre-blind I’m pretty sure I know where Argen went.

Dorana doesn’t want anyone else to suffer the pain of losing someone, so she wants to help.  She creates an illusion of, “Gorgo, Star of Andros, a unique star that lights up the ocean.  Valtor won’t be able to resist the temptation to steal its light.”

Got that right, Dorana!

The two queens do a cool spell, they spread their arms and both sing a note together, creating a barrier around the star.

But what’s this?  Tecna’s got an image of the star on her device and something’s wrong with the barrier!  Bloom realizes, “...too late.”  Dorana and Ligeia realize their barrier has failed.  Twinkle uses her star map to confirm that the barrier is no good since the staryums are already inside!

Aisha: “If Gorgo falls, Andros will plunge into darkness.”  But what about the normal sun, in the sky?! How does this wooooork?  T_T

Bloom: “That’s not going to happen. We’ll save Gorgo!”

The nobles cheer.  :-)

The Winx go outside to a balcony-ish place, giving us a good look at their dresses.  they’re all dressed in the same style as Aisha’s, pastels and tulle and flowers, a look that owes something to Onyrix, I think.  They’re really good dresses, and as usual I like Aisha and Tecna best because they’re in my favorite colors.

Bloom: “Everyone ready?”

But where’s Twinkle?  She’s sitting being sad.  She can’t swim!  She can’t come along!  Flora: “But you do have an important role here, Twinkle.  If you came with us, who would stay here and comfort the people of Andros?”  

Twinkle: “Me?”

Bloom: “That’s right, you’re the only one who can cheer them up.”

Twinkle flies spirals of joy.  

Ok, I really liked this.

Then Nex shows up for some predictable couples drama!  He wants to come along underwater but Aisha says she can take care of herself.  Nex, to his credit, says, ‘I know that. I want to stay by your side anyway.”  and sounds like he means it. Nex transforms his suit with flippers and a facemask and dives in, ending the conversation.

Bloom: “All right girls, there’s only one way down there.  Winx, Sirenix!”

I feel the power of the ocean…

More than any other music in Winx, this song goes right through my heart.

Only way to make it better?  Make it Italian.

So here’s… shall we call it new sirenix?  Or sequin sirenix, since the dolls have sequins?  I like that.  Sequin sirenix is shall be, since I don’t know what the rest of the fandom is calling it.

I like it.  The colors are a little less… whatever made the other sirenix Just A Little Much.  But while the shades are nicer, I think the animators were a bit lazy when assigning colors to the girls  Aisha has the best palette, turquoise, blue and purple.  Poor Stella is stuck in shades of pink and blue, like the designers just gave up on her orange-based color palette, and Bloom shares about the same colors.  Tecna and Flora are in the same shades of blue and green while Musa at least gets her traditional magenta and raspberry.  But even so, I just like these designs.  I also feel like the animators took more care to make it looks like the girls are swimming, rather than just using the same animations for flying but putting them underwater which I felt like they did in season 5.  Their HAIR still isn’t animated like it would be moving underwater, but I think that would be really hard to do.

I have feelings about underwater, because it comes close to a show that tangles my heart up even more than Winx, and Winx has been a fandom of sixteen years.

There was no discussion of sirenix being a power they used before and still have, they just go for it.  It’s not surprising that they’d still be able to access old powers; it makes sense but it does lay down that bit of worldbuilding.  Previously gained powers are not necessarily lost.  But do they automatically keep ALL forms or just some?  I assume they no longer have Tynix because the fairy animals have moved on, and still having Harmonix would be unnecessary once they have Sirenix.  But what about bloomix?  Did the Winx return their bits of the Dragonfire when they got Butterflix, or do they still have it?

Also no mention that sirenix now looks different.  Maybe they just don’t think it’s worth commenting on while a baddie’s attacking, or maybe the season 8 timeslide means sirenix ALWAYS looked like this.

Anyway. The girls and Nex swim through the lovely violet ocean of Andros, doing the Winx giggle.  Then Nex catches aisha for some relationship drama.  He asks her what’s wrong and she says it’s nothing.  Then aisha says she wanted to get the speech right to impress her parents, but she flubbed it.  Next says everyone understands and, “Next time let the others help.”

Wasn’t this Aisha’s Nemesis theme from Wow?  Aisha being too self-reliant? At least it’s consistent characterization, I guess.

More swimming, and the sharkee is stalking them!  Its shadow falls over the gang swimming in a canyon.  That thing’s big! But it’s gone before they can get a good look.

They reach the star, which Flora says is wonderful, and I realize looks just like Castle Elemyn from Bella Sara.  But it’s under attack!  Winx into action!

But here comes the sharkee!  Battle is joined!  

Aisha says it’s a creature of darkness so their sirenix powers have no effect.  The battle isn’t going well!  The girls regroup—and realize Nex is missing.

He’s in some caves full of pink underwater flowers—no, he’s at the star core.  How’d he get all that way?  But he’s there, watching Obscurum and the staryums chow down on the star core.

Nex: “Hey you!  Call off your creatures!”

Dude, you have no backup…

Nex vs Obscurum!  Nex pops out his two phantoblade lightsabers and attacks!

Cut to the girls fleeing the sharkee.  They zap it with various things but aren’t having much luck.  Aisha’s morfix can grab it but nothing else does any good.

Back to Nex and Obscurum!  Obscurum of course hops through portals to dodge.  Nex calls him a coward.  Obscurum zaps Nex from every which way, but… ‘I’ll never give up!  Aisha needs me!”

Back with Aisha, she realizes the sharkee is full of dark magic—but they can’t free it from Valtor’s control without their Cosmix powers, which won’t work in water.  Aisha gets the idea to lure it into a convenient cave.  She’s badass.  The other Winx blast the cave mouth, sealing it except  for a little hole Aisha swims out through. Success! The shark monster is trapped!  

The girls arrive at the core and find Nex getting his butt handed to him. Aisha leaps to protect him with a morfix shield.

Nex: “See, teamwork never fails.”

Aisha: “Sorry I pushed you away before.  I know you wanted to help but I was too focused on not disappointing my parents and my people.  So… power couple teamup?”

Nex: “I thought you’d never ask.”

These two are cute together.  They’re one of the couples I give the thumbs up to.

They lay some hurt on Obscurum and the rest of the Winx blast staryums off the core.

Then Obscurum blasts the ceiling and the cave collapses on Nex! Cliffhanger ending!

#winx season 8 #winx club

[suzanneshannon]

Accessibility and web performance are not features, they’re the baseline

This week I’ve been brooding about web performance and accessibility. It all began when Ethan Marcotte made a lot of great notes about the accessibility issues that are common with AMP:

In the recordings above, I’m trying to navigate through the AMP Story. And as I do, VoiceOver describes a page that’s impossible to understand: the arrows to go back or forward are simply announced as “button”; most images are missing text equivalents, which is why the screen reader spells out each and every character of their filenames; and when a story’s content is visible on screen, it’s almost impossible to access. I’d like to say that this one AMP Story was an outlier, but each of the nine demos listed on the AMP Stories website sound just as incomprehensible in VoiceOver.

Ethan continues to argue that these issues are so common in AMP that accessibility must not be a priority at all:

Since the beginning, Google has insisted AMP is the best solution for the web’s performance problem. And Google’s used its market dominance to force publishers to adopt the framework, going so far as to suggest that AMP’s the only format you need to publish pages on the web. But we’ve reached a point where AMP may “solve” the web’s performance issues by supercharging the web’s accessibility problem, excluding even more people from accessing the content they deserve.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately — about how accessibility work is often seen as an additional feature that can be tacked onto a project later — rather than accessibility work being a core principle or standard of working on the web.

And I’ve seen this sentiment expressed time and time again, in the frameworks, on Twitter, in the design process, in the development process, and so much so that arguing about the importance of accessibility can get pretty exhausting. Because at some point we’re not arguing about the importance of accessibility but the importance of front-end development itself as a series of worthy skills to have. Skills that can’t be replaced.

Similarly, this post by Craig Mod, on why software should be lightning fast, had me thinking along the same lines:

I love fast software. That is, software speedy both in function and interface. Software with minimal to no lag between wanting to activate or manipulate something and the thing happening. Lightness.

Later in the piece, Mod describes fast software as being the very definition of good software and argues that every action on a computer — whether that’s a website or an app — should feel as if you’re moving without any latency whatsoever. And I couldn’t agree more; every loading screen and wait time is in some degree a mark of failure.

Alex Russell made a similar point not so long ago when he looked at the performance of mobile phones and examined how everyone experiences the web in a very different way:

The takeaway here is that you literally can't afford desktop or iPhone levels of JS if you're trying to make good web experiences for anyone but the world's richest users, and that likely means re-evaluating your toolchain.

I’m sort of a jerk when it comes to this stuff. I don’t think a website can be good until it’s fast. The kind of fast that takes your breath away. As fast as human thought, or even faster. And so my point here is that web performance isn’t something we should aspire to, it should be the standard. The status quo. The baseline that our work is judged by. It ought to be un-shippable until the thing is fast.

The good news is that it’s easier than ever to ship a website with these base requirements of unparalleled speed and accessibility! We have Page Speed Insights, and Web Page Test, not to mention the ability to have Lighthouse perform audits with every commit in GitHub automatically as we work. Ire Aderinokun showed us how to do this not so long ago by setting up a performance budget and learning how to stick to it.

The tools to make our websites fast and accessible are here but we’re not using them. And that’s what makes me mad.

While I’m on this rant — and before I get off my particularly high horse — I think it’s important to make note of Deb Chachra’s argument that “any sufficiently advanced negligence is indistinguishable from malice.” With that in mind, it’s not just bad software design and development if a website is slow. Performance and accessibility aren’t features that can linger at the bottom of a Jira board to be considered later when it’s convenient.

Instead we must start to see inaccessible and slow websites for what they are: a form of cruelty. And if we want to build a web that is truly a World Wide Web, a place for all and everyone, a web that is accessible and fast for as many people as possible, and one that will outlive us all, then first we must make our websites something else altogether; we must make them kind.

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