Lupe Camacho

Oh Wednesday, glorious Wednesday. This week has been a perfect emotional storm of work deadlines, impostor syndrome/panic attacks, wet weather, and npm issues (I’m talking to you, v3). But I’m making it through (read: barely hanging on) with the support of many a vitamin D tablet and green smoothie.

On a more positive note, tomorrow will be my one-year anniversary at my current company, and I’m feeling so grateful that I magically ended up here after a long and windy road following my dropping out of grad school. It’s amazing to be part of such a tight-knit, supportive group doing work I love.

Next week I’ll be taking the IAAP WAS certification exam so that we can highlight our expertise in web accessibility and serve our clients and their customers better. ✌️I’ve got those pre-exam jitters — wish me luck!

Coding

• Manifesto by a female open source contributor
  “I will not stop speaking up and setting boundaries if this is necessary to make me feel safe and standing up for the moral values that are important to me.”
• App Ideas
  A GitHub repository featuring a collection of beginner to advanced project ideas to help you improve your coding skills. Each idea features clear objectives, user stories, resources, and bonus features to stretch your skills.
• Making Video Games Is Not A Dream Job
  “Worker exploitation has always been part of the video game industry’s DNA. Executives with multimillion-dollar stock packages often treat their employees like Tetris pieces, to be put into place as efficiently as possible, then promptly disposed of.”
• 10-Step Guide to Local Shopify Theme Development Using Slate
  This week was my second time getting downloaded theme files set up for our development workflow. I was tempted to use Theme Kit but decided to push my comfort level — and thank goodness for this tutorial. Five stars for human-readable language and screenshots. 👏

Accessibility

• Apple’s new feature a step towards digital apartheid
  “From my own experience, one of the most common questions I get as an accessibility consultant is ‘Can’t we just create a special site for people with screen readers?’ I say that you can’t, and even if you could it would be a really bad idea. Inclusive design is about inclusion, not separation. The problem is that with this new tool from Apple, well-meaning people with this common, but terrible idea of separate ‘disability-sites’ now can implement it, whereas in the past they couldn’t.”

Utopia/Dystopia

• Trusting Driverless Cards
  “The car’s lidar (light detection and ranging), cameras, and sensors capture a mind-boggling amount of data on surrounding roads and traffic conditions, but the passenger doesn’t—and probably doesn’t want to—see everything the car sees. Instead, a series of interfaces translate that data into tidy visuals and updates for the rider that better match how we process the world, reassuring passengers that the car is making safe, sound decisions.”

Soundtrack of the Week

Accessibility

• Building accessible websites and apps is a moral obligation
  “You wouldn’t tolerate a builder who didn’t bother reading the building code or educating themselves on how to properly build a house. So why is that OK for us a builders of web things?”
• Accessible Page Navigation in Single Page Apps“Since we’re not relying on the native page load functionality, we’re now in the tricky business of managing focus ourselves.”
• Great Big List – CSUN 2019 Presentation Links
  A massive list of CSUN Assistive Technology Conference presentation links.

CSS

• Things nobody ever taught me about CSS.
  “…A small list of concepts I think are interesting and useful to better understand and write CSS.”

Utopia / Dystopia

• Two amazing ways that blind people can borrow other people’s eyes
  “Smartphones – and increasingly smart glasses – have made it possible for blind and visually impaired people to instantly benefit from someone else’s eyes and intelligence. Let’s look at two top solutions in this space.”
• Smartphone society: Photos showing how essential the cellphone has become
  “In a world where the smartphone is now ubiquitous, photographers capture daily life in which the personal device is part of the moment.” A photo series that’s at times heartwarming, and at times terrifying.
• Ethical Alternatives & Resources
  An online platform for discovering ethical alternatives to “stuff.”

React has on my to-learn list for what seems like ages. I’ve tried diving in numerous times over the last few years, but either the time wasn’t right or I couldn’t find the right course or project to work through. Some courses were too hands-on, while others were too hands-off and quickly led to frustration.

So I just sat with my skill set and waited to find the motivation to jump back in.

However, with work projects on the horizon that will most likely be built using React, I decided it was high time to jump on the framework bandwagon.

Now, you all know I’m obsessed with free online courses. 🏫 Sites like Udacity, edX, and Coursera make learning new skills accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

I always hit up these sites first when I want to learn something. As a novice, I do my best learning when I’m following a solid, foundational plan. Otherwise, I’m likely to:

• Become engulfed in a maze of documentation trying to figure out how to prep my development environment for said new technology
• Experience full-on analysis paralysis when deciding on what to build

So when I finally landed on this course, I knew I had to spread the good news. 🎈 I haven’t completed the course yet, but the instructor is awesome and the project you’ll be working through is a great example of how you might use React in the “real world.” 🌎

Course Overview

Front-End Web Development with React is taught by Jogesh K. Muppala, an associate professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

There are 4 parts to this course:

1. Introduction to React
2. React Router and Single Page Applications
3. React Forms, Flow Architecture, and Introduction to Redux
4. More Redux and Client-Server Communication

While this course is the second part of a 4-course Full-Stack Web Development with React specialization, it’s a great entry point even if you haven’t taken the first course, Front-End Web UI Frameworks and Tools: Bootstrap 4. As long as you understand grid systems and feel like comfortable learning Bootstrap 4 on the fly, feel free to dive right in.

But is it free?

I also want to clarify something about Coursera courses. While you can pay for certificates of completion, you can take any of their courses for free by auditing them.

The Audit option can be easy to miss. If you click on the ‘Enroll’ button for a class, a window pops up that prompts you to start a free trial. Ignore that gigantic call-to-action, and click the ‘Audit the course’ link at the bottom instead.

Course Projects

The course is based around building a single page React app for a restaurant called Ristorante con Fusion. Your app will feature restaurant information, an interactive menu that displays details and customer comments for the user-selected dish, and a form (with validation) that enables users to submit their comments.

A lot of times, getting set up is one of the hardest parts of the development process. Where this course really shines is in its ability to simplify the process of setting up your development environment. You’ll get a handle on everything from setting up Node.js and NPM to using Yarn Package Manager to install dependencies.

Muppala also shows you how to install the Reactstrap component library, which you’ll be using to flesh out your app components. Because you’re using Bootstrap 4, you can really focus in on learning the React without having to take the time to mess with CSS and general beautification of your app. (CSS is my jam 💖, but my brain can only handle one thing at a time!)

Course Improvements

I think a lot of courses leave a lot to be desired in terms of teaching web developers to comply with accessibility guidelines. This is one of them.

I’m currently building out the interactive menu as instructed, and it lacks many accessibility considerations. For starters, the clickable dish cards aren’t accessible to keyboard users. Also, aria-live attributes are lacking so screen reader users aren’t alerted when dish information and comments are printed to the screen.

So if you’re looking for the holy grail of courses that incorporates all the best practices (wait — do those exist?), this seems to be lacking some essential info about making your app a11y-friendly.

However, if you’re looking for a deep dive on React and are willing to learn how to incorporate accessibility into your app on your own time, give the course a shot!