2024 was in many ways a very challenging year for me, but it was also one of the most significant.

This year’s annual review post is a bit different.

In previous years, I reflected on the work that I did, the web projects I built, the posts that I wrote and so on. There was lots of that in 2024 too of course (well maybe except the blogging part, that seems to become a pattern).

But the truth is, most of my energy this year went towards building a life for our new family.

My son was born in November, and he’s happily sleeping on my chest as I am typing this. I’ve never felt more grateful or proud about anything in my life, and I still can’t believe he’s with us now.

The months leading up to his arrival were quite stressful at times, supporting my wife’s pregnancy and preparing everything as best I could for the steps ahead. We’re planning a move next year, and there’s still lots of work to do before we can settle into our new home.

But all of it is very rewarding, and I can’t wait to see where 2025 takes us. Despite everything that’s going wrong in the world right now, I feel hopeful for the future.

We had our fourth short story fika yesterday. This time, the theme was ‘duty’ and the stories featured were:

• The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty
• The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
• The Veldt by Ray Bradbury

It was just three of us this time, and we had a great chat about the duties and sacrifices of war, the questioning (or lack thereof) of outdated traditions, and the costs of our increasing reliance on automation in daily life.

We had our fourth short story fika yesterday. This time, the theme was ‘duty’ and the stories featured were:

• The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty
• The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
• The Veldt by Ray Bradbury

It was just three of us this time, and we had a great chat about the duties and sacrifices of war, the questioning (or lack thereof) of outdated traditions, and the costs of our increasing reliance on automation in daily life.

Stripe’s API got a new major version, and no one noticed.

It's only a few days until 2025. That means one thing: it is time for my yearly tradition of reviewing… some of my year. I'll cover work, conferences, reading, writing and music.

This will inevitably sound cheesy, but I am once again genuinely grateful for the opportunities I got… there were fun projects at work, I got to see some of my dearest artists live and I got to share knowledge and opinions at events among some of my favourite peers. At the same time, the last few months have, honestly, been intense, and I am looking forward to take a few breaks in January.

I also can't not mention politics. I saw a number of sad elections results. I saw people chose to vote, basically, against other people. It was heartbreaking to see people vote against women, against trans people, against people who crossed borders, and also against the odds for humans to inhabit this planet… and some major tech leaders chose to embrace, encourage or cheerlead that. Booh.

Some say one should focus on things one can impact. I'm not always good at that, but I'll do it now, by sharing a bit more about my year in terms of projects, conferences, reading and listening.

Projects

I spent most of my time on two projects for the Dutch government: NL Design System and the digital accessibility (standards) team at Logius.

At NL Design System, I got to organise another Design Systems Week, and worked on accessibility testing, guidance for forms and WCAG (both in Dutch), communication strategy, events and our website. At Logius, I worked on growing our participation in international standards discussions, specifically accessibility standards like WCAG and EN 301 539, at W3C and ETSI. It's been really cool to get back into familiar groups and join new ones (like the TC and JTB; yes I learned new abbreviations why).

Next year I'm increasing my time for standards at Logius, which, sadly, also means I'm leaving the NL Design System team.

From February, I'll have some availability for new projects, too: ~2 days/week to work on accessibility, frontend and/or design systems, do get in touch if you can use help.

Conferences

It's been a very busy and very fun year in conferences (I recommend going to conferences, for all reasons Sophie outlines in her post You should go to conferences).

Some talks I liked:

• The art of reflection by Imran Afzal at All Day Hey
• Feminism in programming language design (start at 20:50) by Felienne Hermans at Joy of Coding
• The many lives of a notification by Sarah Highley at Accessibility Toronto

I loved speaking at a number of them, too. I got to meet new people in the industry and hang out with friends. Even if it is nerve wracking at times, it gives me a lot of energy.

Creativity, art and AI

In October, I presented a new talk called Creativity cannot be computed at Beyond Tellerrand in Berlin. I talked about what's great about arts and creativity, in the context of our industry's tendency to leave stuff to computers. I love computers and art both, but we've got to prioritise. Some of this has been in my head for the last decade, and I loved to hear how it resonated with people in conversations after (maybe partially because I can't seem to shut up about it, sorry to all affected). I plan to write more about art and AI on my blog, but you can already read along with the slides or watch the video.

Acccessibility

Another new talk was Built-in accessibility: blessing or curse, which combined some of my earlier talks on tooling, browsers and CMSes with what I learned about design systems at NL Design System, all to uncover a general theme: that building in accessibility is not a one size fits all solution, but when done right, can be a sound part of your accessibility strategy. I gave this talk at A11y Club Amsterdam and at Accessibility Toronto.

Popovers

Earlier in the year, I did the most northern iteration of my popover talk (video) at All Day Hey in Leeds. I was very happy how it turned out and it was great to visit this city and this event that I had heard so many good things about.

My shortest talks were at Joy of Coding in my home town of Rotterdam, where I spent 5 minutes rambling about software and accessibility, and Mozilla's performance.sync() meetup in Amsterdam, where I talked about Open UI and reducing bundle size.

In the next year, I'd like to talk about web sustainability more, and continue to cover accessibility, design systems and AI/art.

Reading

I read some books this year, two of my favourites were:

• Character limit: how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter; a lot of the shocking facts in this book were public knowledge already, but Ryan Mac and Kate Conger did a wonderful job telling how the events unfolded, the details make one fear a world in which Elon Musk has any influence.
• Against technoableism: : seeing people with disabilities as an “inspiration” or needy of technological “fixes” is problematic, this book explains why.

These blog posts from others are among favourites this year:

• Coming Home by Mandy Brown
• Generative AI is for the idea guys by Rach Smith
• The Dilemmas You'll Face When Creating a Component Library by Andrico Karoulla
• We have a content quality problem, not a content quantity problem by Cory Dransfeldt

Music

Three albums that came out in 2024 that I liked:

• Odyssey by Nubya Garcia (jazz saxophone with orchestral arrangements, vocals and more).
• Lives Outgrown by Beth Gibbons (of Portishead fame, it grew on me).
• Drop 7 by Little Simz (hip hop, it feels more free and experimental than her previous work).
• IJsland by Abel & Sef (Dutch punk hip hop that I loved almost instantly).

In live music, it was a good year… I stayed on top of who's touring and ticket acquisition, and managed to see many faves. Most liked: IJSLAND, Massive Attack and Robert Glasper. I also made a point of going to see stuff when traveling, a tradition I hope to keep, though it gets expensive when traveling outside of Europe and its subsidised cultural venues.

In music making: I am picking up playing piano again and have joined a choir, which has been on of my best decisions, it is so much fun. As usual, I should have listened to a friend's advice earlier.

Writing

With 10 posts in total, I didn't write as much on this blog in 2024. I don't know which were most read, but these got some good feedback:

• On popover accessibility: what the browser does and doesn't do (co-written with Scott O'Hara)
• “AI” and accessible front-end components: is the nuance generatable?

Cities

Outside The Netherlands, I spent time in Duisburg, Berlin, Taipei, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Brighton, Antwerp, Paris, Leeds, London, Bad Schandau, Brussels, Los Angeles, Toronto, Liverpool, Vienna.

Self study

I did a bunch of self-study:

• Josh Comeau's The Joy of React. It was indeed joyful, and the most down to earth overview of React I've seen so far.
• the IAAP certification exams. I'm now a CPWA, which is both WAS and CPACC. I have more to say about this, maybe some other time or 1:1.
• I worked with Melinda on specific parts of my public speaking, I would absolutely recommend her to anyone looking to learn.

Wrapping up

I wanted to write up some resolutions for the next year, but I ran out of time. I guess I'll leave it, as a resolution itself, for the next year. If you're reading this, I wish you all the best for the new year!

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Originally posted as What I got up to in 2024 on Hidde's blog.

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