Øredev 2023: WCAGmire
Download a 5.3MB tagged PDF of my slides or try the embedded view if your browser displays PDF inline.
I was invited Malmö, Sweden to present two talks at Øredev. Well, they asked me to do one but then suggested that hey, since I’m already there and stuff, how about another.
I experimented with using machine translation to replicate the content of many slides into Swedish as a second column. Those columns are tagged as Swedish in the PDF, but I am not sure how they will actually sound (I have no Swedish language pack installed nor the ability to understand it). Also, since I used machine translation it is likely that a lot of this is weird, even with my efforts to choose translations that used the words I want and not unrelated homophones.
The text in the slides is set in Atkinson Hyperlegible. Many of the outdoor images are generated from Midjourney. The PDF is exported from PowerPoint, after confirming reading order and alternative text, and the PDF itself has had no editing other than to add a Swedish language indicator to the Swedish passages.
I use an iframe to embed the slides, but only after the user clicks to do so. Some users have their browser configured to download the slides, so this approach prevents them being pushed a 5MB file just from opening the page. If this is broken or problematic for you, then you should track me down at Øredev and let me know. Maybe not during my talk, though.
I do not make the PowerPoint file available because my slides have been taken and used by others before, and I believe they should have to exert at least some modicum of effort to steal from me.
This post is a stub to hold the slides during my talk and will be updated sometime within a few days after my talk with more nuggets.
Update: No Video of My Talk
Due to an issue with the audio in the room, there is no video for this talk. However, you can see the version of this talk I gave at Paris Web. The good news is that my other talk was recorded and uploaded, so you can also watch Under-Engineered Patterns.
As a consolation prize, here’s a visuals-only 80 second Øredev 2023 aftermovie (I am not in it, but I understand I appear in the Facebook galleries).
4 Comments
Reply As a Swede, I’d prefer not having the machine-translated Swedish column within the slides. The translation is imperfect (as is to be expected from machine translation), and its presence distracts from the content at large.
The majority of Swedes* understand English well enough to follow along without needing a translation in the first place, even if they don’t all feel comfortable speaking the language themselves.
*This depends a bit on demographics, of course. Older generations or people who immigrated from countries where English wasn’t taught and used in the same way may have more trouble on average. The best approach may be to ask the audience somehow.
In response to . Reply Also, because I simply can’t help myself, I checked the conference webpage for accessibility issues on a whim. It’s… downright disastrous, as far as I can see. Disappointing.
(I’m not posting this as a critique of you, obviously I know you have no part in their website – I’m just sharing my impression as I’d expect better from a conference that’d opt to book you as a speaker)
In response to . Reply Thea, thanks for the feedback. I had such a positive response when I included questionable French content for Paris Web that I thought, even with the likelihood everyone in the audience knew English, it could still be helpful (and potentially entertaining, which you will hear me note when the video of the talk goes live).
In response to . Reply That’s fair! English is a lot less commonly spoken in France than in Sweden, but I’m open to the possibility that other Swedes wouldn’t find this as distracting as I do and may even appreciate it.
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