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Good morning and

Happy birthday Dev Breakfast!

 It's September and that means we got to celebrate the first anniversary of this newsletter and your journey with us earlier this month. What started as an experiment has grown into a monthly routine for hundreds of developers just like you. This month the newsletter is built by Eevis.

Eevis-Developer-Futurice

 

 

 

Eevis is a software developer who believes the language we use shapes the reality around us. Focusing on front end development, she loves topics like CSS, GraphQL, TypeScript, accessibility, and enjoys sharing what she has learned. When she is not writing or speaking about code, she plays ultimate frisbee and explores the world with a kayak.

You can read more about her from her website.

Eevis' Picks

How to write an image description

 

How to write an image description

Missing alternative texts for images is one of the most common detectable WCAG failures in websites, as found in the evaluation conducted by WebAIM. Also, in almost 10% of images with an alt text, it was something like "blank" or "image". This is problematic because text is the only medium that screen reader users, who have a vision impairment or low vision, can use to access the web. This post by Alex Chen shares tips on how to write image descriptions with a model of object-action-context to help make websites more accessible.

 

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Dev Discuss-Podcast

 

[Dev Discuss Podcast] How to develop for neurodiversity and universal design

Not every brain works the same. We learn, sense, and communicate differently. However, society defines a certain normal way of how these things should be done. This "normal" is quite often the basis for web development. Software does not always take into account these different ways of learning, sensing, and communicating. We as software developers should be responsible for paying attention to these aspects.

In this episode of Dev Discuss podcast, Jess Lee, Ben Halpern, Heidi Waterhouse, and Lydia X. Z. Brown, discuss neurodiversity, and what could be improved in tech when it comes to universal design and accessibility.

 

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simply-easy-just-clearly-basically

 

How to remove condescending language from documentation

In the spirit of just-around-the-corner Hacktoberfest, I wanted to include something I found inspiring from last year's contributions. In this blog post, Carolyn Stransky shares what she has learned from the process of making open-source documentation more inclusive using alex.js-linter. Alex.js is a tool to catch insensitive and inconsiderate writing and offering alternative words for problematic expressions.

 

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200 OK! Error handling in GraphQL

 

200 OK! Error handling in GraphQL

Error handling in GraphQL can be quite confusing. You can get a status of 200 - OK even when the entity is, for example, not found. Then there's that cryptic error-array in the results. It can totally feel unclear. This talk from Sasha Somolon explains error handling in GraphQL, and that not everything is an error - it also can be a different type of a result.

 

Watch the Video

 

 

Talk: GraphQL, you're intuitive and flexible, we'll be friends

 

GraphQL, you’re intuitive and flexible, we’ll be friends

When you meet a new, interesting person and get to know them, there are usually certain stages in the process. It’s more or less the same when you get to know any new, fascinating technology. If it is exciting and practical even after these stages, you could compare it to making a friend.

In this talk, Eeva-Jonna Panula will tell about her journey getting to know GraphQL, and share things she has learned along the way, and things she enjoys about it.

 

Watch recording

 

 

Jobs

Senior Backend Developer | Helsinki

"As a senior backend developer, I focus mostly on creating technical solutions and having good time working in collaborative multidisciplinary teams. I’m not snapped to a certain role but can stretch my skills to front-end development and have discussions with the client and designers on the purpose and goals of the service we are building.”

If you like what our backend developers are saying about the role, find out how you can become part of the Futu family.

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Architect | Helsinki

Architects at Futurice are generalists working across industries to help clients solve their important challenges in business and technology. Having a wide understanding of technology and a toolset of modern frameworks and methodologies, their years of experience in software development also extend to a wider scope of problems to tackle so they can see the impact being made at an organizational level.

Are you our new colleague?

 

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Futurice - Work with us!