Guides, Opinions, and Other Things

I'm Melanie Sumner; you may know me from such places as the internet. I started learning how to build for the web in 1997, and I'm still as thrilled about it today as I was then. I figured I should write some stuff down before I start forgetting things. So here we are.

Articles

  • The Story Between the Lines: An Open Letter to Crunchyroll

    Dear Crunchyroll,

    Every story has two versions: the one its creators intended to tell, and the one the audience ultimately experiences. For millions of viewers outside Japan, Crunchyroll exists between those two.

    I’ve been a paying subscriber since 2016.

    For nearly a decade, anime has been part of my weekend routine. Whenever possible, Saturdays are now “Anime Saturdays”; they are a chance to slow down after long work week, settle in with a cup of coffee, and become immersed in stories I might never have encountered otherwise. I get to spend some time in my own escape before returning to my quasi-workaholic self during the week.

    Now, as much as I have come to enjoy it, I want to be clear that I don’t believe anime is above criticism. Like every storytelling medium, it contains extraordinary works alongside stories that rely on misogyny, objectification, unhealthy relationships, or themes that I personally find difficult to watch. I don’t believe anime is inherently better than books, film, television, or any other medium. What keeps me coming back is that, at its best, it tells stories that are imaginative, emotionally resonant, and deeply human. Among thousands of titles, there are stories worth experiencing. But, this letter isn’t about the anime industry. It’s about the experience of watching anime on Crunchyroll.

    By profession, I’m a staff software engineer, and I specialize in digital accessibility for applications at scale. I spend my days helping teams build software that more people can use. I work on the kind of software that companies on the Fortune 50 use. I’m very good at what I do, and I have been doing it for a long time. The thing is, after enough years doing this work, accessibility becomes part of how you experience technology. I tend to more naturally notice details that many people don’t, but I don’t consider that a burden. If anything, I think it’s one of the reasons I’ve been fortunate enough to become a leader in my field.

    When I sit down to watch anime, though, I’m not looking for accessibility problems. I’m looking for an immersive story. I want to giggle because it’s silly, or cry because it’s sad! What disappoints me isn’t that I notice quality issues; it’s that they’re so distracting they interrupt my ability to become immersed in the world the creators worked so hard to build.

    The most obvious example is subtitle quality.

    I have tremendous respect for translators and localization teams. Translating dialogue across languages and cultures is incredibly difficult work, and this letter isn’t a criticism of the people doing that work. It is, however, a criticism of the experience that ultimately reaches your paying customers.

    Too often, subtitles are inconsistent, awkward, or simply incorrect. Sometimes dialogue doesn’t make sense. Sometimes terminology changes without explanation. Sometimes emotional scenes lose their impact because the subtitles don’t faithfully communicate what the characters are trying to say.

    As a viewer who doesn’t speak Japanese as a first language, the integrity of subtitles is not only essential, it requires trust. I’m trusting that what I’m reading faithfully represents the story the creators intended me to experience. When that trust begins to erode, I stop thinking about the characters and start thinking about the subtitles instead.

    I expect subtitles to at least be consistent within the same series. If a character’s name is Myne, then I expect it to remain “Myne”—not become “mine” or “mind” from one subtitle to the next. Every inconsistency chips away at the viewer’s trust, pulling them out of the story and forcing them to wonder whether the confusion is intentional or simply a quality issue.

    The second issue is one I find even more frustrating: untranslated on-screen text.

    Anime often tells stories visually as well as verbally. Characters exchange text messages. They read letters. They receive emails. Important information appears on signs, whiteboards, newspapers, computer screens, calendars, handwritten notes, and countless other places where the written word carries the story forward.

    Too often, none of that text is translated. Sometimes those details are incidental; sometimes they’re essential. As viewers, we shouldn’t have to guess which is which.

    If a text message changes a character’s motivation, I should be able to read it. If a handwritten note explains why someone made a difficult decision, I should know what it says. If a newspaper headline provides context for events unfolding in the background, that information should be available to everyone watching. Those aren’t decorative details. They’re part of the story.

    One of the questions I ask frequently in my own work is simple: “You can do that—but should you?”

    Could an episode be released without translating story-critical text? Of course.

    Should it? I don’t think it should.

    Over the years, I’ve come to believe that quality and accessibility reinforce one another. Teams that genuinely care about the experience they’re creating, very nearly always build products that are more accessible. It’s a byproduct of their expertise. Now, compliance matters! I’ve spent a lot of my career helping teams achieve it, but compliance has absolutely never, not-even-once been my definition of excellence. The teams that consistently produce accessible products are rarely the ones chasing checklists. They’re the ones that care deeply about quality.

    I can confidently say that the same principle applies here.

    When localization is done well, it disappears. The audience isn’t thinking about subtitles, translated signs, or text messages. We aren’t thinking about the streaming platform at all. We’re simply experiencing the story.

    Crunchyroll occupies a unique place in making that possible. For many people outside Japan, you are the primary gateway to these stories. That’s an incredible privilege, but it’s also an incredible responsibility. You’re not simply distributing entertainment; you’re preserving and communicating someone else’s creative work to an entirely different audience.

    I don’t expect perfection. Localization is difficult (from both a language perspective AND a technical implementation perspective), production schedules are demanding, and mistakes will happen.

    I do expect a commitment to quality. I expect subtitles that earn the audience’s trust. I expect story-critical on-screen text to be translated. I expect quality assurance that catches obvious errors before episodes are released. I would even find the ability for your users to submit subtitle corrections to be an acceptable stop-gap until you’re staffing this essential area appropriately.

    I’m writing this because I want Crunchyroll to succeed. I’ve invested so many years in your platform because I enjoy what it makes possible. You’ve introduced me and countless audiences around the world to remarkable creators and remarkable stories. That’s an achievement worth celebrating. It’s also why this is so disappointing!

    As a paying customer, I shouldn’t have to wonder whether an emotional moment lost its meaning because of a poor subtitle. I shouldn’t need to pause an episode and search online to discover what a text message or handwritten note said. I shouldn’t have to question whether my confusion is intentional, cultural, or simply the result of inconsistent localization.

    These are technical problems with technical solutions.

    The best localization doesn’t call attention to itself. It quietly carries the audience across languages, cultures, and continents until all that’s left is the story. That’s the experience I’ve been hoping for since I subscribed in 2016, and I still believe it’s one worth striving for.

    I love you, do better.

    Until next time. -M

  • Custom Keyboards

    Every year we kind of have an overarching theme for holiday gifts. This year we thought it would be fun to build custom keyboards. We were only mostly right. It was fun and also frustrating. Anyway, I’ve tried to link to the things I used, but none of them are affiliate links. I was not compensated by anyone for anything I purchased or have linked to in this blog post.

  • Avoid Adding Modals to Other Modals or Dropdowns

    I ran into some UI patterns that raised some red flags; one was having a modal/dialog triggered from…some other element that is already “on top” of the current page (e.g., other modals, dropdown menus, flyout panels/drawers). After digging into it a bit more, I figured out why it bothers me. I’ve compiled some points to consider, but the TL;DR is this: avoid mixing dropdowns, search boxes, and modals in a single interaction. Each pattern has its place, but combining them can create accessibility failures, cognitive overload, usability friction, and other chaos. Instead, use other (recognized) patterns (e.g., combo box, explicit advanced search links, or inline search fields) that have clear expectations, expected contextual behaviors, and maintain accessible focus flows.

  • Art in Austin

    I work for a company that was recently acquired by IBM. We’re now HashiCorp, an IBM Company. Anyway, they had an offsite event to welcome us; flew most of us to Austin for a week.

    I found some interesting (to me) art while I was there, so I’m going to share the pieces I purchased and some of the things I’ve bought online since then (they were the larger pieces that would not have fit in my luggage).

  • Some notes on CSUN 2025

    It’s Monday. More than that, it’s the Monday following CSUN ATC 2025, and the web is chock full of awesome takes, hot takes, and really bad takes. So I guess it’s time to add mine!

  • axe-con feedback

    I spoke at axe-con last week, and it was one of the most satisfying talks I’ve given…ever.

    I rarely get a lot of feedback from talks, and I have generally assumed this was either because I am not great at speaking in public, or the subject matter is just not interesting enough to give feedback about, or even both.

    This time it was different. So I’m going to write them down, anonymously because I didn’t ask anyone if I could quote them specifically, but I do also want to be able to read these later and feel the joy of knowing that I really did help someone understand a thing.

  • Building Community: A Reading List

    It’s a new year, and I’ve been participating in the typical new year rituals of editing and organizing. In attempt to wrangle some of my physical book collection, some of books I have naturally sort themselves into categories. These books have been super useful to me, so I’m going to share them.

  • Reflections on Marriage

    Despite my persistent reticence to go anywhere during winter holidays, I received an invitation to attend a cousin’s wedding in California, and, after talking it through with my husband, decided to go. I hadn’t seen these cousins for nearly 30 years. I also found out that my two sisters planned to attend, and the three of us haven’t been in the same place at the same time since at least 2002. At this point in my life, I’m an experienced traveler, so that part was easy. The rest? Not so much. Today I want to talk about some things I experienced and reflect on what marriage has come to mean to me. So if you are usually just here for the awesome accessibility advice, feel free to skip today.

  • Living with ADHD

    For years, I felt like there was this persistent fog around my brain. If I could just try a little harder. If I could train my mind and focus a little more. I could do so much. I could be the best version of myself. If. The list was endless. Turns out, it wasn’t me, it was my brain. I had ADHD, I just didn’t know it yet. I’ve been on this journey for many years now, so maybe it’s time to talk about it. Maybe my story will help someone a little bit.

  • If You Care

    I avoid using the word “care” when I talk about accessibility, and I believe that part of my success in reaching engineers is that I have avoided that word. I try to avoid all emotion words, really. Many web developers/software engineers get really upset if you use the word “care”, because in doing so, you’re implying some shortcoming on their end if they do not. And heavens forbid a software engineer being forced to face a shortcoming…or a feeling. It is, as memes would suggest, a well-known flaw.

  • A11y at Work: When Team Opinions Differ

    Sometimes working with a larger team means that you’ll get more varied opinions about how something should be done. Now, this is good when the final result is one that covers more gaps and includes more use cases. But what about accessibility? WCAG is the conformance standard, but it’s the bare minimum. Specifications can be confusing or interpreted differently depending on your background. Teams have a lot of challenges, and accessibility is one of the big ones.

  • Understanding AccName: Part One

    Before we begin, some disclaimers and other things of note:

    1. While I am, at the time of this original post, one of the co-editors for the Accessible Name and Description Computation specification, this does not mean that I am a comprehensive authority on the topic. I am the co-editor because at the time, another editor was needed and I stepped up. I learn more all the time.
    2. There will be some swearing in this series.
  • How I audit

    I dislike doing accessibility audits. Even more, I really, really, REALLY hate receiving them from other people.

    Okay, maybe I should clarify a little. My strong hatred is generic audit reports that companies pay a lot of money for but don’t produce useful results.

    Maybe I should just explain.

    So when my place of employment (at the time of this writing) was asking, “hey some customer asked for a thing called a VPAT, do you know what that is?” I was interested at the opportunity to weigh in.

    Okay, so I’ve ended up doing the audits for our public accessibility conformance reports(ACRs); while it’s not as satisfying as writing new linting rules, strategizing about Continuous Accessibility, or crafting new design system components that are accessible and have great documentation, it has been satisfying because I’ve been able to undo some of the irritations I’ve experienced in the past.

  • How I use my Stream Deck

    I bought an Elgato Stream Deck in the fall of 2020, and it came up recently that I may use it in a non-conventional way. Elgato has my attention as a gamer; I use their key lights, microphone, and even tried their web cam for a while (the web cam didn’t keep; I have a Sony ZV-1 and I’m happy with it).

    I currently use my Stream Deck attached to my Macbook Pro for work; here are some of the things I have it set up to help with:

    • GitHub commands I can never remember (or, just don’t want to get wrong)
    • CLI commands for MacOS (especially the one I have to run after every update)
    • Zoom
    • Rectangle, because Mac doesn’t have the awesome screen snapping stuff Windows has
    • Code snippets I use a lot
    • Zakim commands for W3C IRC chat

    So let’s talk about a couple of these use cases.

  • Approaches to Accessibility and Other Things

    Some context: This blog piece is really me unpacking some emotional stuff. I know! Feelings! In a tech blog? No way! But seriously, maybe it will help you too, though. If not, that’s totally fine…YMMV.

    Yesterday, I was in a discussion about an accessibility-related technical issue, and a person in the discussion said something along the lines of “I don’t understand how you can’t empathize with the user here.” TBQH, my brain…broke.

    I wanted to laugh/scream/cry because isn’t that why I do what I do? I choose to continue in a technical niche that also happens to have a great deal of emotional labor attached. Their comment felt like an attempt at emotional manipulation, and I reject that.

  • Reasonable WCAG Additions

    I’ve been reading the WCAG Success Criteria on a nearly-daily basis for…well, for a really long time now, and I have come to the opinion that some no-nonsense, reasonable additions would be useful. Note that all of these are based on my own personal experience and don’t reflect anyone else’s opinions but my own, unless they share this blog post with you and tell you that they explicitly think these things are a good idea. Which they are, of course.

    I’m also grateful for WCAG Success Criterion 1.3.1 Information and Relationships because it covers a multitude of sins, BUT I dream of a little more clarity, a little more guidance, a little more explicit “lolno quit that.”

  • Let's talk about Lensa

    Recently, my internet has been awash with Lensa.ai images. At first I was resistant, but then I realized that the computers have my everything anyway, so might as well. How would AI imagine me? What would I learn about myself? Would I finally have an avatar I didn’t hate? I had questions.

  • The Web I Want(ed) To Dev

    If you’re unfamiliar with me, or my work, there’s a good chance you won’t automatically grok the context for the work that I do. You might even be tempted to find me on Twitter and tell me how wrong I am about any number of things that I have written. Or if I was a real developer I wouldn’t have been okay with leaving something out. But the truth is, the reality of the work we do as web developers is much different that then work we wish we did as web developers. So for now, let’s dream a little.

  • My Process for Accessibility Testing

    This is a guide. This document intends to provide insight into the steps that I take when evaluating the accessibility of a page. It can be used to estimate the work needed to do any kind of accessibility evaluation in general, or help inform your own process.

  • Getting Started With Accessibility

    This article is meant to be a practical guide to answer the question, “how do we get started with accessibility?” This is based on my own experience, but that’s a lot of experience, so it’s probably sufficient for unpaid advice. Hopefully you found this because you’re interested in building an accessibility practice at your company, and not just because you asked accessibility experts to give you their time (without compensation).

  • Links in Labels

    It seems to be a relatively common pattern to have links in labels, but is that accessible? In this article, I’ll explain what’s going on, and explore some options, see how they work with a screen reader, and (hopefully) provide some food for thought.

  • How to Learn Ember

    I get asked this question enough that I have the answer saved to a file so I can copy/paste it. I think I’ll post it here, that way anyone can benefit from it.

  • The Cost of Copying Design

    They say that you can tell an experienced developer because when you ask them a question about how they would approach or solve a specific problem, their answer will be “it depends.” These days, if a designer were to ask me if it would be okay to design a component in a certain way (“just like Twizonple does it”), my response is probably going to be “I’ll look at it, but it’s unlikely since they are well-known for inaccessible design. Out of curiosity, what features do you like best about it?”

  • Details-As-A-Menu

    A few months back, I had to work on a situation where the details element was being used as a dropdown menu for a site navigation. In this post, I’m going to explain why I think you should not use a details element as a dropdown menu. TL;DR? Don’t use the <details> element for a dropdown menu, use a <button> element that toggles open a list of links instead.

  • The Web is Awesome, the Web is Horrible

    Today marks the 25th year of my first foray into building something for the internet. Happy web-versary to me! It seems like forever ago, but it also seems like just yesterday. I suppose this is the nature of how time passes, or feels like it happens. If you are focusing on it then it doesn’t seem like any time has passed at all, but if you ignore it for a bit it just flies by.