Vale.Rocks Posts
Declan Chidlow — Web developer and writer
Long form writings about assorted topics.
vale.rocks/postsDeclan Chidlow writes about whatever he's thinking about — accessibility advocacy, AI criticism, Neovim configuration, unicycling, nootropics, game reviews — with the conviction that a personal blog should actually be personal. Posts range from carefully argued essays on why you can't opt out of accessibility to strongly worded rants about open-source licensing, all written with a directness that makes the range feel cohesive rather than scattered.
Written by Declan Chidlow.
Regular
Publishes weekly or bi-weekly
1
Independent Blog
English
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Design Considerations for Moderation Tooling
I have dedicated substantial amounts of time moderating communities on the internet. One of the duties I fulfil at Stoat has been to moderate content, and in doing so I’ve seen a great number of horrific things. The sort of things that no person should have to see, but which nonetheless must be seen in pursuit of protecting users. I have developed the most popular moderation bot on the platform, AutoMod, and contributed to work on the internal moderation tooling and procedures. The accessi...
My Opinionated CSS Reset
As years have stretched on, browser user-agent styles have grown somewhat estranged from how many developers use the web platform. I am no exception to this rule and find my own needs at odds with the predefined user-agent stylesheets of major browsers: Chromium - https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/heads/main/third_party/blink/renderer/core/html/resources/html.css Firefox - https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/layout/style/res/html.css WebKit - https://github.com/WebKit/...
Experiencing Zen in the Ratz Instagib Meat Grinder
Ratz Instagib is a fast-paced first-person shooter. As the name suggests, each hit is an instant kill. Be not disillusioned by my writing of this article, for this is not a game I am good at. In honesty, one shouldn’t even venture as far as to suggest that it is a game I am so much as merely alright at. It is, however, a game that I find myself infatuated and enticed by, despite my inadequate skill. It is a mad and unforgiving experience that is intoxicating to give yourself over to. The c...
Feeling The Pulse of Twenty Twenty-Five
This is my annual pulse post, which is data heavy and contains visualisations and interactive elements. The experience of viewing it in a feed reader might be compromised, so I advise viewing it directly on the web at Vale.Rocks. As is recent tradition at the year’s end, this is my ‘wrapped’ or ‘recap’ or whatever else you might be inclined to call it. I’ve watched as the ‘year in review’ posts of my peers have rolled in with spins more poli...
You Can't Opt-Out of Accessibility
I’m frustrated, and I’m angry at the state of accessibility on the web. I’m usually not much one for profanity, but I’m fucking pissed off. I’ve been worn down slowly by thing after thing – death by a thousand cuts. I feel powerless and overwhelmed, and I’m dismayed to know I’m not the only one feeling as such. Accessibility is so fundamental that this shouldn’t even be a post I feel compelled to write, yet I feel like some fanatical obsessiv...
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