Jonathan Stephens

Hello! I'm Jonathan. I've been working on the internet for 15+ years now. I built my first website, one weekend, sick, with a tax refund check, CSS for Dummies, and a text editor. Signed my first client a few months later—National Geographic photographer. Been working on internet things since.

The Accessibility Compat Data project run by @lolaodelola.bsky.social is a vital and much-needed resource. Let's fund it. #a11y ericwbailey.website/published/th...

Introducing the Accessible Components Library tetralogical.com/blog/2026/10... Everyone's fave a11y chums open source their Accordion, Breadcrumbs, Dialog, Disclosure, Pagination, Tabs, Text input, Textarea components, and docs of assistive-tech compatibility & the applicable WCAG success criteria.

5/n There's a lot to say about the latter, because there are dozens of parameters and choices that all interact to create a typographic work/experience: Leading, measure, letter spacing, typeface of course, size, colour, contrast, layout, hierarchy, margins, paper, inks, process, details &features.

The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, has conceded defeat in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.

This week’s newsletter is about friendships ending. Read it, and then maybe reach out to someone you haven’t reached out to in a while. Or walk away from someone who has you doing all the work. buttondown.com/monteiro/arc...

As authoritarianism continues its advance across the planet, global internet freedom declined for the 16th consecutive year, according to Freedom House’s new Freedom on the Net report. Justin Hendrix and Ramsha Jahangir of Tech Policy Press break down the findings, from age checks to AI regulation.

I'd like to see more cis allies grapple with the crazy making environment trans ppl are living in right now the way that Hauser grapples with that here. There is no one right way to understand this, in part bc there's no one way all trans ppl experience it. But really sitting with it is important.

The widespread hate for AI "slop" shows the public had come to appreciate a certain basic standard of intelligible deployment & the minute we got rid of the designers no surprise everything stopped working as well including the inputs for how we develop things.

olu.online/the-price-of...

Free online talk announcement: next week, I'll speak at @a11ytalks.com about accessibility pushback, and how to tackle them! Wed, October 28, 12pm ET Register: a11ytalks.com/posts/2026-oct #A11yTalks #Accessibility

Damn right!

Tomorrow! It's an interaction design class, sure. Also includes why other people can be so frustrating, writing is so hard, and whether you should or shouldn't freak out that "people aren't reading." 10am PDT www.eventbrite.com/e/how-to-hav...

US garment workers helped pioneer multi-ethnic labor unions, which united people across racial, religious, gender, linguistic, and cultural divides. Also native-born citizens and immigrants. I think about that sometimes when I see people suggest such divides are unbridgeable.

Finally some news that doesn’t make me want to throw up

Electric assist cycles give people choice. My "new" refurbished e-bike from JobRad Loop has made trips I used to avoid possible. Get €50 off a refurbished bike of your choice at jobrad-loop.com/en-nl with promo code: modacitylife50 Thanks for collaborating JobRad Loop and for the new adventures!

Confiscate all his assets. Break up and/destroy all his companies. Take away literally all his money. Ban him from all industry and investment and employment. Let him live in whatever public housing he can find off of whatever public assistance is available.

oh my god is the internet good again? (probably not but this site is)

Some more photons from my driveway photon trap

Also, just fuck an ethical A, ppl: IF someone tells you you can help them gain power by taking away the rights of **just one group, one small group** and promises you the moon if only they win power... ...what you know about them is they will trade human beings' rights for their own personal power.

When Grammy-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens begins playing “Old Corn Liquor,” a traditional Black American folk tune, acclaimed Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man recognizes similarities to Chinese pentatonic music and spontaneously joins in. The joy on their faces says it all.

This is insane, but not surprising.

I will be eternally grateful to have been born in a literate culture where literacy was valued and expected and I still had the time, attention, and freedom to develop a literacy practice. Understanding context, inference, vocabulary, perspective, affect — all powerful, useful skills and values.

No joke. I think this is the most important video I have ever seen about mobile games. This guy breaks down how this game psychologically profiles you, and makes the game harder or easier in order to show you ads

I like this framing. It gets at the asymmetry of the conservative civil society and the 70 year attack on the public sphere.

Working on my tiny Chicago homes. Here’s a peek at 6… 6 more to go ahead of their debut at Open House Chicago. All printed with small metal type and measuring less than 3” square.

The number 1 thing that you can do to help a tiny press like Malarkey stay in operation is to buy ebooks straight from us. They’re all $5 or less and DRM-free and they don’t spy on you. The books, and this is important, are good! malarkeybooks.com/ebooks

Students made their first minicomics in my intro making course - mostly standard format but this student, a first time maker(!), did something so off the charts I’m still reeling from it! & he made like 12 of them for his classmates! A paper engineering feat of flipbookery as well as killer drawing!

In case you missed it last night: we are seeing reports all over the country of immigration surges and state violence. If you need whistles for your community, we will send you 100-3000 3d printed for free, and we will love doing it. 3dwhistles.com

If you've ever wanted to think more about language, my podcast @lingthusiasm.com with @gretchenmcculloch.com has almost 10 years of monthly episodes, all originally researched and made by our little team. We make fun episodes about 40 minutes on a wide variety of topics, no linguistics necessary!