The Weekly Wrap: August 2, 2026

For most of the summer, I've been working on some accessibility issues discovered on my library's website. (All universities are going through the process of ensuring their web presence is fully accessible.) Back in May, my colleague and I met with a member of the auditing team. After the meeting, the auditor sent us an accessibility report that had been provided from a (free) three-party vendor.

Some of the things were easy fixes. Other things I used Claude's coding capabilities to help with. But the vast majority of errors on the report were either lacking context so I couldn't find the problem, not actually issues, or just plain wrong.

Time and time again, I kept trying to find and fix errors that didn't exist. I went to the third-party vendor and ran our website through over and over. It kept coming back with failures.

Today, I gave my colleague an update on the things I fixed, the things I thought he could fix, and the many issues that seemed unfixable. About 30 minutes later he came back with a review from a different web accessibility tool that said "Aside from this one issue, you're good! The other tool is crap." (The tool my colleague used actually showed where on the page the errors were occurring. It also differentiated between have to fix and should fix.)

I 100% support being fully accessible but if you're web audit sends me an error that says fix this code "<p></p>" with no context or page link or full code snippet, you're not being helpful.

I can't wait until this project is over.

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• The melody that's in everything. [WaPo - gift link]
• Keeping track of your travel memories. [NYT - gift link]
• Follow the butterflies. [The Atlantic - gift link]
• Why it had to be Matt Damon. [Culture Study]
• I you want to match your wine with your sign, read this. [Wine Folly]
• Would you want to know? [NYT - gift link]

• A brilliant idea that benefits an entire city. [CityCast DC]
• Baby shark, do do do! [Short Wave]
• Astrology is bad astronomy. [StarTalk]
• I need someone to make a movie about this tree. [Atlas Obscura]

• lol *cries* [mandziypat]
• When The Last Ship first aired, we watched the first season. Then we forgot to come back to it. Now that it's on Netflix, I kept seeing it crop up on recommended lists. So now we're back to binging the entire show. I had vague memories of the first few episodes but, oddly, the plot holds up - even after (maybe even because of) the COVID pandemic. The writing is B-level but the acting is generally better than you'd think for such a genre show. I greatly enjoy the "what if" disaster premise. Also, I can't help but giggle at the clear breaks for commercials. [Netflix]

• I tried a new recipe for our meatless Monday. Kiddo has been loving mushrooms (huzzah!) and I thought she'd like portobello “Philly Cheesesteak” sandwiches. These were good but not nearly as good as the vegetarian French dip sandwiches I make. You definitely won't confuse this sandwich with the real thing, but it worth a shot. We served the sammies with the rest of a bag of shoestring fries that was hanging out in our freezer. [Eating Well]
• We recently hosted our kiddo's birthday party. We planned for two slices of pizza per kid. They ate far less than that. We were left with over two full pizzas. I froze most of the slices, but I also set aside a few for my work lunches. You know, nothing hits quite like a cold slice of pizza while you scroll through your work email during the lunch hour.