~$ cat projects/blog.txt
june 15 2023
this might be the 10th blog i've started over the past 20 years. it's probably common, but i find i'll start a blog because i think to myself, "i should start blogging [again]." and so i do. but i quickly lose steam or just forget to update. and if a long enough period of time goes by, that blog is dead forever.
i'm hoping this one will be different because it's also an experiment. and as a software engineer, there is nothing i like more than getting an idea and toying with it. i just hope i can find it in me to keep it going.
a few years ago, i learned about the semantic web, and more
specifically, semantic html. i liked the idea. the thought of a
well-structured web containing and linking together well-structured
documents, pages, images, media, etc. seems like a utopian dream of the
original arpanet. a huge benefit of semantic html is its accessibility to
those with visual impairments. a screen reader can much more easily
transcribe the contents of a page that is well-structured with predictable
components than it can read a <div> soup. that kind of
accessibility is important for everyone, and simply interesting to me.
i also have grown to dislike the bloat of the modern web. having to transfer tens of megabytes just to view something is ridiculous in my opinion. i thankfully have a gigabit connection, so load times tend to be shorter (but still noticeable). but those without access to high-speed internet suffer the exclusion.
so this blog is an experiment in creating an accessible website:
- large text
- well-structured pages with semantic html
- fast load times (i want to hold off on javascript as long as possible)
- focus on static content, not dynamic user-created content
i'm not going to change the world, but i can at least experiment with how it could be done. and maybe participating myself is the best thing to do.