Notes

16 April 2021 16:22 IST

Last night’s Small is Beautiful livestream is now up on our site with transcript, captions (and new for this week), links!

We started discussing the National Rail greyscale “mourning” accessibility issues and so much more.

Now I’m off to sleep for the whole weekend 😴

15 April 2021 15:22 IST

On today’s livestream (5pm Irish time), we’re going to talk about @BetterBlocker, and its impact on both accessibility and privacy, inspired by the National Rail earlier in the week.

You can join in with us (with headphones and mic!) in the studio too:

https://small-tech.org/events/small-is-beautiful/

Aral has also got something very cool and new to share 😊

If you miss the livestream, never fear! The video is always available on our site near-instantly, and I try to get a good transcript and captions up within a day or two.

13 April 2021 08:41 IST

Captions are now working on our latest Small is Beautiful video! My fault… detailing below in case anyone else comes across the same issue…

Why my Vimeo captions weren’t working:

I’d generated the captions from the edited automated transcript (using Simon Says) as usual, and exported them in .srt format. When I tried to upload them to the Vimeo distribution section, the usual upload interface didn’t appear after choosing the file, but refreshing the page would show that the captions were uploaded sucessfully. Enabling the captions worked in so far as the CC button was visible and toggle-able on the video player, however the captions themselves did not show up.

Comparing the captions file to previous episode’s files showed no obvious differences. Then I tried different formats too, same issue as above.

Finally, looking through the Vimeo Support page, I noticed advice to run the WebVTT-formatted captions through a validator. Wondering if there might be some problematic characters in the caption text, I used the first WebVTT validator I found to validate the .vtt version of the captions file and got the following errors:

Line 3000, column 13: Incorrect start tag.

Line 3007, column 18: Incorrect start tag.

Turned out the issues were me using <div> and id="" in the caption text, trying to be a bit too clever in making the text more understandable. Both bits of markup were getting confused with the caption meta information. I tweaked the text, reuploaded and now our captions are working correctly. Hoorah!

12 April 2021 17:42 IST

And now the video for last week’s Small is Beautiful, introducing the Svelte Nano Donation component, is up on our site with a transcript.

Captions coming shortly, just trying to work out why Vimeo isn’t showing them correctly…

12 April 2021 17:15 IST

I’ve added a custom dictionary and yet the auto-transcription can’t ever transcribe mine and Aral’s names correctly.

Why could that possibly be? 🤔

(I do actually know, it’s because our non-English names are too “foreign.” And clearly my non-American accent doesn’t help.)

12 April 2021 10:34 IST

This week’s Small Is Beautiful livestream will be on “National Rail Fail: lessons to be learned on privacy and accessibility”

How come Better Blocker fixes the National Rail site? What are the wider implications?

Thursday 15th April, 5pm (Irish time) on the Small Tech website.

It’ll be me and Aral this week. Back in separate rooms, I suspect.

12 April 2021 09:38 IST

Turns out when you’re blocking trackers, you end up blocking a lot of other nonsense. We just had a little look at why Better Blocker is blocking the “mourning” colour filter on the National Rail website.

It’s devastatingly on brand for UK marketing folks to throw usability and accessibility out the window in favour of a bit of royal deference.

Not just the greyscale filter, but also this homepage satire. In case you’re looking for Further Advice on “Prince Philip” or “Refunds.”

08 April 2021 18:39 IST

If you missed the live stream, you can watch our unscheduled Small Is Beautiful episode for the Svelte Nano Donation component release. Aral’s tweet.

Much fun was had, being in the same room, messing with the camera focus, and most importantly, talking about Nano (and why we don’t like most cryptocurrencies) and the design and development decisions behind the component.

Also the first “outing” for the first ever outfit I’ve sewed myself.

You can watch Small is Beautiful #8 on the Small Tech website.

31 March 2021 14:01 IST

A bit close to the end of the month for my liking, but new blocking rules are now out!

If you use Better and find any unblocked trackers or issues with sites, please let me know and I’ll use those reports to make Better better for everyone 😊

24 March 2021 09:47 UTC

Don’t mean to keep going on about Better Blocker App Store reviews, but these little bits of feedback have a big impact on my psyche. And if you are one of those people who left a 5 star review lately, you have actually made me a little bit (happy) tearful this morning.