Blog posts and photo essays by Jared Cunha
Let’s talk about performative accessibility. Accessibility can be a seductive marketing pitch, but it’s a pledge that few organizations actually put into process—leaving trusting customers out of pocket and users unable to proceed. The National Design Studio entered this fray recently with lofty claims that don’t match its body of work.
People who know accessibility well possess a collaboration superpower. If you’re only calling them in to check compliance boxes, you’re missing a tremendous opportunity to to improve your entire design and development processes, and your team culture.
A second trip in less than two years to the eternal city, this time without an agenda or any sites to see.
Google recently integrated Gemini into its Home products, including its Nest cameras to provide detailed descriptions. So being the mature person that I am, I gave it the finger. Then I got creeped out.
Something I started thinking about this week is how we should be disclosing our use of AI. As the technology improves, it is more difficult to determine what is made by a human and what has been conjured up by a machine. But what is the best way to do this? And what are the drawbacks?
In 2024 we traveled to Portugal, rented a car and drove from Lisbon to Lagos, stopping in small towns along the coast.
I had the opportunity to speak at the 2025 DotGov Design conference. My talk was titled “Design for Accessibility and Inclusiveness in Civic Space” which covered topics such as why it's so important to learn assistive technology and how we must adapt to an increasingly difficult landscape.
The HTML dialog element gives us powerful native modal capabilities, but creating dialogs that work well for all users still requires intentional accessibility and UX decisions.
A week in Brazil is’t much time. Visiting multiple cities limits that time further. In 2024, I flew down for about a week, visiting three cities.
Just as musicians develop muscle memory through hours of practicing rudimentary techniques until complex mechanics become second nature, we have to build own muscle memory with assistive technologies by using them regularly. This hands-on experience transforms accessibility from an abstract checklist into an intuitive understanding that naturally informs every product decision.
I migrated from next/image to Cloudinary while maintaining a manageable workflow, using Copilot to bounce around ideas and speed up the refactor.
A deep dive into Direct File’s All Screens page, which is available to the public through its open source repository.
In an effort to write more as I learn, I talk about features I’ve added to my site with Copilot, including RSS feeds, adjacent post navigation, and some organization for my blog content.
LLMs can lower the burden of writing useful alt text for images, with the right prompting.
Photos from a 2022 trip to Pico Island in the Azores, and connecting with friends
How I migrated my website from Gatsby to NextJS, and other changes I made along the way.
In July, I traveled to Toronto for a conference. It was a very short trip, and my first time visiting the city.
Photos from a very short trip to the eternal city.
After booking this trip, I described it as a once in a lifetime vacation. I’m already plotting my return.
Before flying to Dublin, I stayed a day in New York. These are the photos I took walking around.
Walking through multiple attempts to achieve sustainable image handling and writing workflow when the simplest option was in front of your face the whole time.
A week in Ireland, with most of our time spent in Dublin with a some tours out the Cliffs of Moher and Brú na Bóinne
Photos from our trip to Iceland, visiting Reykjavík, Vestmannaeyjar, and multiple points along the southern coast.
Reflecting on the last year, the good, the bad, and the journey forward.
I am using a privacy-first analytics platform that does not collect any personal data.
Here, I am documenting the steps I am taking as I go through redesigning and refactoring my site. This post will be updated regularly until the design is done.
Building a styleguide for Restaurants Plus
My journey from working on a design team to engineering.
Running localhost on Android isn’t easy, but there is a way with Charles proxy.
Moving from Wordpress to Jekyll.
Corpora Translations is a small, two-person translation company based both in Brazil and in the U.S. Announcing their new site!
The 2012 election was my third election working at POLITICO. I'd like to describe some of the process that goes into creating our election material.
Data tables are notoriously pesky elements to wrestle down into a narrow viewport. Here's another solution that I'm throwing into the mix.
A lengthy post outlining the process of redesigning POLITICO from conception to completion.
Here I am, about 6 or 7 years into my career and I’m writing the introductory post of the website under my own domain. How can this be? Allow me to explain.