Minimum Viable Product means different things to different people. Shipping a first version of a digital product is easy, but qualifying what exactly is minimally viable is hard:
Should it work on mobile?
Do you need branding?
Have you tested it in multiple browsers? Multiple devices? Multiple operating systems?
One thing that plenty of people are guilty of, myself included, is ignoring web accessibility. Maybe those people don’t know what it is, so let’s define it. From Wikipedia:
Web accessibility is the inclusive practice of ensuring there are no barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to, websites on the World Wide Web by people with physical disabilities, situational disabilities, and socio-economic restrictions on bandwidth and speed.
Sounds good, right? Well not everyone agrees.
Rich Harris, the creator of Svelte, shared this screenshot of Hacker News a few days ago:
even by HN standards this is an all-timer
— rich harris (@rich-harris.dev) July 16, 2025 at 3:35 PM
[image or embed]
What this Hacker News poster is referencing is this - Svelte is a compiler, and when it compiles your code it will warn if you’re doing anything wrong when it comes to accessibility.
The OP calls this idea woke, because everything they don’t like must be woke, and they don’t like their framework shaming them for bad web development.
You would think this person would want to build products that have the opportunity to reach as much of the free market as possible?
Putting in the work
Good on Rich for his response. Open source authors like Rich, core team members, and contributors, all do so much work so that we can build amazing things.
There is an often repeated mantra from the Government Digital Service that applies here:
Svelte introduces just enough friction to encourage developers to build better websites.
Rich and the rest of the Svelte team have done the hard work to make web accessibility simple. Through their work, they set out their vision for what the modern web experience should be
I share their vision of the web, one that is accessible to all and equitable for all.
Those people who don’t want that? Fuck ‘em.
Honourable mentions
- 🎮 I picked up Plague Tale: Innocence on sale and I’m really enjoying it. The Last Of Us vibes set in 14th century France is an unusual take on a game but the setting and story is great. I think the overflowing waves of rats is giving me weird dreams.
- 🎮 Indika is another unusual game in an usual setting - a descent into madness of an Eastern Orthodox nun in an alternate reality early 20th century Russia. It was such an insane game that I really loved.
- 📖 I finished Party Lines: Dance Music and the Making of Modern Britain. A brilliant book about the history of dance music in the UK and how that history is intertwined with politics.
- 📖 I also bought a Kindle for the first time since I’m doing loads of travelling over the next few months. First up on that is Mountain in the Sea. I’m only about 1/5 of the way in and I can see why it’s won so many awards.
- 📺 Foundation is back, and I’ve only watched the first episode but it was great. I’ll wait and see what they do with the Second Foundation storyline before I decide if this season is good or not.
- 📺 Trainwreck has some wild stories but Astroworld was really scary. I’ve been in situations at festivals where it feels like a crush is about to happen and left, so I can see how easily something like that could happen.
- 📺 Human was a really interesting watch that unfortunately had to sprint through some topics. I’d have really enjoyed a few more episodes of breathing room for them to go deeper.
- 🔗 Nobody Has A Personality Anymore is an interestingly damning look at how we overanalyse every quirk as something to be fixed.