About:

Jan Maarten is an inclusive designer, privacy advocate, and writer who helps people design things well by leveraging several decades of experience crafting inaccessible products. He also creates tools and writes documentation that people actually read.

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A personal reflection on 2025, highlighting professional growth, the importance of work-life balance, and coping with loss while cherishing family moments.
The author discusses the value of email newsletters, highlighting their role in curating information amidst the overwhelming nature of digital content. They share a curated list of their favorite newsletters, emphasizing the impor...
The text discusses experiments with design system annotations and the challenges faced. It outlines the problems with hiding annotations directly in components and toggling the visibility of all annotations, and suggests potential...
The text discusses the advanced methods of annotating components in design systems. It explains how to create Preset annotations for design systems, the properties that should be included, and the sources to gather information fro...
The text discusses the importance of accessibility annotations in design systems to ensure that there are no access barriers when a design is ready to be built. It highlights the common misconception that accessible components wil...
The text discusses the annoyance of chain letters, the author's blogging journey, the platform used, writing process, inspiration, topics of interest, and future plans for the blog.
The text discusses the misuse of personal data by large platforms and tech companies, and how to confound AI bots that steal content. It provides a list of bots that can be blocked and other strategies to prevent content theft.
The text discusses the misuse of personal data by large platforms and tech companies, and how to confound the bots that extract content without credit or compensation. It provides a list of bots that have been blocked and various ...
The text discusses the dangers of entrusting personal data to social platforms like Facebook and Google. It highlights the risks of being known online and the exploitation of personal data by companies. It also delves into the sto...
The text discusses the dangers of entrusting personal data to social platforms like Facebook and Google. It highlights the risks of being known online, the exploitation of personal data by companies, and the systemic issues of dig...
The text discusses the abuse of the #GAAD hashtags by companies, the use of sock puppet accounts, and the involvement of accessiBe in a coordinated marketing effort. It also highlights the lack of incentives for participation in t...
The text discusses the abuse of the #GAAD hashtags by companies, the use of sock puppet accounts, and the involvement of accessiBe in a coordinated marketing effort. It also highlights the lack of incentives for participation in t...
The author discusses issues with keyboard focus on Ghost bookmark cards, including a character limit on alt text for featured images and the focus-ability of link descriptions/excerpts for bookmarks. They provide a solution to fix...
The author discusses issues with keyboard focus on Ghost bookmark cards, including a character limit on alt text for featured images and link descriptions/excerpts being keyboard focus-able. They provide a solution involving JavaS...
CVS Health Inclusive Design team has created a new Figma annotation kit for web accessibility. The kit has been tested and refined with 65 design teams and has been used to make 150,000+ annotations within 1,100+ design files. It ...
CVS Health Inclusive Design team has created a new Figma annotation kit for web accessibility. The kit has been tested and refined with 65 design teams and has been used to make 150,000+ annotations within 1,100+ design files. It ...
The author discusses rebuilding their portfolio using Ghost, moving away from WordPress due to accessibility issues, and their plans for the future development of the site.
The author discusses rebuilding their portfolio using Ghost, moving away from WordPress due to accessibility issues, and their plans for the future development of the site.
The author discusses their recent certification in web accessibility and their realization that they have never made an accessible website. They express their shame and regret, and discuss the lack of accessibility in the USA comp...
The author discusses their recent certification in web accessibility and their realization that they have never made an accessible website in their two decades as a web designer. They express their shame and regret and vow to make...