The collected writings of Dustin Whisman, web developer.
Reviewing my Garmin watch after using it for a year Published: 11/17/2025 I bought a Garmin watch on a whim one year ago, and having used it daily and completing two of the half-marathon training plans, I figured now was as good a time as any to review it. The model that I bought was a Forerunner 265, which seemed like a good-enough, running-focused option without a bunch of expensive extra…
UnConference: Beyond the React-ion: Web Development with Intention Published: 6/6/2025 I gave a talk with Jon Oliver (not that one) for Sparkbox's UnConference for Spring 2025. Our talk was the keynote and covered the web development landscape in 2025, covering everything from React to... not React. Spoiler alert, I advocated for web standards based approaches and Jon highlighted some ways to use…
Untangling spaghetti code with vanilla JavaScript Published: 6/2/2025 Back in the day, when jQuery was the way to write JavaScript, and “react” was only a verb, spaghetti code was a constant problem. At that time, the web had become capable enough to handle user interactions in the browser without needing to fully reload the page. You could submit a form using XHR (XMLHttpRequest) or AJAX…
Friendly reminder: accessibility can't be fully automated Published: 5/15/2025 It's Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), which feels like a good time to check in on where we're at in terms of fixing or preventing accessibility issues on the web. The WebAIM Million report from this year shows that across one million home pages, 94.8% of them had automatically detectable WCAG 2 failures.…
How accessible is Fandom? This is part 12 of a series evaluating the accessibility of the top 100 websites in the US. This time I'll be taking a look at Fandom. Read the methodology description to learn about my process. Published: 2/1/2025 First, a little housekeeping. I took a break from this series for a little while, partially because I didn’t want to do anything even remotely related to work…
How accessible is ESPN? This is part 11 of a series evaluating the accessibility of the top 100 websites in the US. This time I'll be taking a look at ESPN. Read the methodology description to learn about my process. Published: 11/17/2024 What I tested # With it being a Sunday during football season, I decided to focus on NFL-centric pages, so in addition to the home page , I also tested the NFL…
How accessible is Quora? This is part 10 of a series evaluating the accessibility of the top 100 websites in the US. This time I'll be taking a look at Quora. Read the methodology description to learn about my process. Published: 10/20/2024 What I tested # Quora is kind of a strange case in that you can view questions if you find them through search engines, but if you visit quora.com , you get a…
Dozens of accessibility issues found on The New York Times. One developer tries to understand why. This is part 9 of a series evaluating the accessibility of the top 100 websites in the US. This time I'll be taking a look at The New York Times. Read the methodology description to learn about my process. Published: 9/15/2024 What was tested # The home page and an article page made the most sense to…
How accessible is IMDb? This is part 8 of a series evaluating the accessibility of the top 100 websites in the US. This time I'll be taking a look at IMDb. Read the methodology description to learn about my process. Published: 8/25/2024 What I tested # For IMDb, I tested the home page , the search results page for “twisters” , and the movie page for Twisters (no real reason, it’s just a recent…
How accessible is Instagram? This is part 7 of a series evaluating the accessibility of the top 100 websites in the US. This time I'll be taking a look at Instagram. Read the methodology description to learn about my process. Published: 7/20/2024 What I tested # Unless you have a direct link to a post or reel or whatever, you need an account to use Instagram in any real way, so I tested the signup…