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A11y Box iOS | Mobile A11y

iOS’ UIAccessibility API is huge. I like to think I know it pretty well, but I’m always being surprised by discovering features I previously had no idea about. Like many things on iOS, the documentation for UIAccessibility is not always complete, even for parts of the API that have been around for years. In an […]

Getting started with PDFKit

In my post about my custom presentation slide app I mentioned that because of time constraints, I decided against doing my own slide layout. Instead I’d do that in DeckSet, export my slides to PDF, and show the PDFs in my app. So, how do you do that then? Getting a PDF on the screen […]

Executing commands from Gradle

Simply invoke command line processes within Gradle Tasks Recently, I setup a system to automate the process of taking screenshots of an Android application. The system consisted of instrumentation tests, Gradle tasks, and a Fastlane command. The instrumentation tests were responsible for loading the different screens and capturing the screenshots. The Gradle tasks were responsible […]

Constructing Kotlin Friendly Code

Kotlin is often lauded for it’s conciseness and eloquent syntax, but often suffers from being confined to more limited Java coding conventions. This may be welcoming to Java developers looking to adopt Kotlin in their projects, but could be off-putting for others working in different environments, as well as, somewhat limiting Kotlin’s full linguistic potential. […]

Is bakuchiol safe during pregnancy? episode 210

We’ve got a fully packed program today.  We’ll be covering a couple of cosmetic science news stories, catching up from my hiatus and answering questions about… Is silicone suffocating hair and causing hair loss? Do proteins in nail products strengthen nails? What is goat’s milk doing in soaps and more? What’s an affordable version of […]

Migrating our component library to the Material Button

Header Photo by Pearse O’Halloran on Unsplash For our Android clients we have a small component library which is used to shared common visual elements across the different Android applications that we work on. We recently updated our applications to the Material Components library, meaning that our component library itself needed to go through the same transition. Within […]

It’s about time

People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. — Albert Einstein Time representation is a necessity for nearly all applications. The ability to display, reference, track, and manipulate moments of time plays an important role in the development of applications. But […]

Android Live Regions | Mobile A11y

Live Regions are one of my favourite accessibility features on Android. They’re a super simple solution to a common accessibility problem that people with visual impairments can stumble across. Say you have a game app, really any type of game. Your user interacts with the play area, and as they do, their score increases or […]