Top all-time · #4764
Léonie Watson
Personal blog · tink.ukwebdesign
Léonie Watson writes tink, a personal blog at tink.uk about web and design. Since 2015, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 23 times, most often “Losing Sight”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Accessibility writing by Léonie Watson, who is blind, covering screen readers, alt text and accessibility support, plus a personal essay on losing her sight.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Léonie Watson's personal website. Writing about the web, accessibility, and other things.
Most-linked posts?
- Losing Sight2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-10-03
- Thoughts on screen readers and image recognition2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-01-02
- Everybody Be Coil. You Be Coil2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-11-02
What Hacker News says?
I don't have diabetes, and I don't really understand what it's like to live with diabetes. But, I found this story to be very powerful: https://tink.uk/losing-sight/
Comment linking /losing-sight/
on “A $250 Biohack That’s Revolutionizing Life with Diabetes”Submitted Losing Sight as a story · 564 points
HN discussionNot with keyboard interaction: they’d have to add :focus rules and tabindexes to the parent. Screen readers sometimes read out generated content. Léonie has more info: http://tink.uk/accessibility-support-for-css-generated-conte...
Comment linking /accessibility-support-for-css-generated-content/
on “Show HN: Hint.css v2.0 – Pure CSS tooltip library”Submitted The difference between keyboard and screen reader navigation as a story · 71 points
HN discussionThere is. The problem is that automatically attached alt-text isn't particularly useful. You don't know what the intention is of an image. Is it of a banana? A specific banana? The sticker on the banana? https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/07/should-you-embed-alt-text-i... And, no, this isn't something which AI can help with. https://tink.uk/thoughts-on-screen-readers-and-image-recogni...
Comment linking /thoughts-on-screen-readers-and-image-recognition/
on “Dublin Core, what is it good for?”Submitted Perceived Affordances and the Functionality Mismatch as a story · 12 points
HN discussionMost accessibility shops and devs tend to use the free NVDA screenreader[0] for accessibility testing because of the costs associated with JAWS. There are differences between the two (and the other well used screenreader VoiceOver) but NVDA is a damn good product with a decent user base that certainly helps in finding potential hiccups in complex frontend applications. Usually this happens when one of the screenread…
Comment linking /understanding-screen-reader-interaction-modes/
on “A beginner’s guide to web accessibility”Submitted Flexbox and the keyboard navigation disconnect as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI bet this person is from a different culture than you? I'm American raised in the states, and this read like a Brit. The author's domain is .uk ( https://tink.uk/ ) so I suspect that's true.
Comment linking /
on “Htmhail”Submitted Understanding semantics as a story · 4 points
HN discussionBy the way, the author of this blog post, Leonie Watson, is herself blind. She's well known in the accessibility field for her conference talks on accessibility (there are many on YouTube). A few years ago she wrote a personal piece on her blog describing how she lost her sight and how she came to accept such a change in her life. It's well worth a read: http://tink.uk/losing-sight/
Comment linking /losing-sight/
on “How to create content that works well with screen readers”Submitted Flexbox and the keyboard navigation disconnect (2016) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe following phrase from the linked article by Léonie Watson [1] jumped out at me: > blind people, particularly those who once had sight (and that's most of us) I wonder if those of us who have been blind from birth tend to forget that. I'm pretty sure I do. And while I don't have data on this, my guess is that the largest proportion of blind people who are active in advocating for accessibility have been blind fro…
Comment linking /text-descriptions-emotion-rich-images/
on “Writing Great Alt Text: Emotion Matters”Submitted Everybody Be Coil. You Be Coil as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Playing with Envision Glasses as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Accessibility Is Resistance as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Adventures with BeMyAI as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted We Need CSS Speech as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thoughts on skin tone and text descriptions (2021) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thoughts on screen readers and image recognition as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Coil, a service that uses Web Monetization to let consumers pay creators as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thoughts on Screen Reader Detection as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Regaining sight? as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
