+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 22, Issue 34, February 14, 2024. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 34 CONTENTS. SECTION ONE: New references. What's new at the Web Design Reference site? https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/ New links in these categories: 01: ACCESSIBILITY. 02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: DRUPAL. 35: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: HTML. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: USABILITY. 09: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. The Accessibility Mindset: Moving Beyond Remediating, Fixing, and Reacting with Jesse Loseberg (Video) By A11yTalks. "This session will investigate the hidden questions in the websites and applications we build: Who is this for? Who is able to use it?…" https://a11ytalks.com/posts/2024-FEB/ What Is a Descriptive Transcript? By Accessible Community. "Have you ever wondered how people who cannot see or hear use a computer? They rely on braille keyboards and displays to access information. That means they need descriptive transcripts of video content, so that visual and auditory information can be turned into braille…" https://mailchi.mp/a8856ebca4d9/accessibility-tip-of-the-week?e=1982f777f6 Don't Disable Form Controls By Adrian Roselli. "Just another usability and accessibility pro telling authors not to do the thing they continue to do…" https://adrianroselli.com/2024/02/dont-disable-form-controls.html Consider Accessibility When Using Horizontally Scrollable Regions in Webpages and Apps By Bogdan Cerovac. "After doing an audit of a webpage ,where navigation require horizontal scrolling, I decided to test what does that pattern mean for people with disabilities. Longer story short - be careful, maybe it's not worth it for critical components like navigation." https://cerovac.com/a11y/2024/02/consider-accessibility-when-using-horizontally-scrollable-regions-in-webpages-and-apps/ 2.5.6: Concurrent Input Mechanisms By Diana Penamora. "…Concurrent input mechanisms allow you to choose the input method that best suits your needs, therefore breaking down barriers to access…" https://ialabs.ie/2-5-6-concurrent-input-mechanisms/ Can Generative AI Help Write Accessible Code? By Léonie Watson. "…The unavoidable conclusion is that when you ask a generative AI tool for help writing accessible code, is that you should not trust the response you get and should verify it with sources you do trust…" https://tetralogical.com/blog/2024/02/12/can-generative-ai-help-write-accessible-code/ Opportunities for AI in Accessibility By Aaron Gustafson. "In reading Joe Dolson's recent piece on the intersection of AI and accessibility, I absolutely appreciated the skepticism that he has for AI in general as well as for the ways that many have been using it…" https://alistapart.com/article/opportunities-for-ai-in-accessibility/ Dynamically Adding Text Alternatives to Images With AI By Karl Groves. "…The strength to this approach is that it fixes missing text alternatives quickly…The most notable and impactful downside is, as I mentioned in a post on my personal blog, that AI lacks an 'opinion'. In this case, the opinion it lacks is about what the image represents in the context of its use…" https://afixt.com/dynamically-adding-text-alternatives-to-images-with-ai/ What Do the Pharmacy Settlements Mean for Accessibility? By Thomas Logan. "…In this episode of A11y Insights, Ken Nakata from Converge Accessibility and Equal Entry CEO and founder Thomas Logan talk about the settlements and check the accessibility of their websites to gauge if they're accessible today…" https://equalentry.com/accessibility-pharmacy-settlements/ The Decision to Leave Tech By Todd Libby. "…The accessibility space is toxic. Not all of the accessibility is toxic, there are highly intelligent and wonderful people in the space I have worked with and learned from over the years. There is a segment of good in a sea of bad…" https://toddl.dev/posts/the-decision-to-leave-tech/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. When to Use The min() or max() Function By Temani Afif. "min() or max()? You always struggle to know which one to use and you end up trying both until one of them works…" https://css-tip.com/min-max/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Foundations of Survey Design in UX Research By Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis. "…Improvement starts with a good foundation of survey history and terminology. And that's what we're covering in this article and in our book Surveying the User Experience…" https://measuringu.com/foundations-of-survey-design-in-ux-research/ +04: EVENTS. Don't Forget The Documents. Common Accessibility Errors Automated Tools Miss February 14, 2024. Online https://www.microassist.com/webinars-pdf-accessibility-errors-tools-miss/ Trends to Avoid in 2024 with Danielle Zarcaro February 14, 2024. Online https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-accessibility-meetup-group/events/297814247/ Graphs and Charts: Meeting WCAG 2.2 Level AA Requirements February 21, 2024. Online https://accessingenuity.com/blogs/access-ingenuity-webinars/graphs-charts-meeting-wcag-2-2-level-aa-requirements-digital-accessibility-webinar Website Accessible? Learn What to Look for and Other A11Y Basics February 23, 2024. Online https://www.eventbrite.com/e/website-accessible-learn-what-to-look-for-and-other-a11y-basics-tickets-817595719807 JSWorld Conference February 28-March 1, 2024. Amsterdam, Netherlands https://jsworldconference.com/ World Information Architecture Day 2024 March 2, 2024. Online https://www.worldiaday.org/ Digital Accessibility Program Planning March 4, 7, 12, and 19, 2024. Online https://events.educause.edu/learning-labs/2024/digital-accessibility-program-planning Virtual Web Accessibility Training March 12-13, 2024. Online https://webaim.org/training/virtual/ WebDevCon Conference 2024 March 12-15, 2024. Amsterdam, Netherlands https://webdevcon.nl/ +05: HTML. HTML as the Baseline By Chris Ferdinandi. "…I wanted talk about HTML as the baseline: what that looks like, how to build things that way, and maybe even why you'd want to…" https://gomakethings.com/html-as-the-baseline/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. Offloading JavaScript With Custom Properties By Heydon Pickering. "Sometimes a web development client doesn't know quite what they want…" https://heydonworks.com/article/offloading-javascript-with-custom-properties/ Web Development Is Getting Too Complex, And It May Be Our Fault By Juan Diego Rodríguez. "An overwhelming number of frameworks and tooling available today gives the impression that web development has gotten perhaps too comple…" https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2024/02/web-development-getting-too-complex/ The Web Is Mostly Links and Forms By Chris Ferdinandi. "…a vast majority of web apps are mostly just websites…JavaScript can serve to enhance what these apps do, but it's not the core of what they do…" https://gomakethings.com/the-web-is-mostly-links-and-forms/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. I Think About AI Like I Do Plastics By Anne Sturdivant. "Plastics were never really your friend. It was forced on society by a giant lobby group dead set on making it ubiquitous and spread across life. Same with AI, it isn't really your friend, it is being forced on us to occupy all segments of life…" https://micro.anniegreens.lol/2024/02/08/i-think-about.html You Don't Have a PDF Problem, You Have a Workflow Problem By Frances Duncan. "A PDF is a barrier between you and your users. But you keep creating them anyway. What's the problem with PDFs? And how can you keep them from proliferating?…" https://www.lullabot.com/articles/you-dont-have-pdf-problem-you-have-workflow-problem Is Apple Breaking PWAs Out of Malicious Compliance? By Bruce Lawson. "As the showdown between the European Union and Your Best Friend Apple looms (27 days, according to OWA's Digital Markets Act Countdown), it appears that Apple is intending to break PWAs in iOS 17.4 beta 2…" https://brucelawson.co.uk/2024/apple-breaking-pwas-out-of-malicious-compliance/ Meet the Team: Steve Faulkner By Tetralogical. "Meet Steve, a seasoned accessibility specialist but new to the TetraLogical team after slotting into place as the fourth Director last year…" https://tetralogical.com/blog/2024/02/09/meet-the-team-steve-faulkner/ +08: USABILITY. Individualizing UX: Ever Narrower User Targeting By Jakob Nielsen. " User targeting in UX has progressed through 5 stages toward treating each user as a unique individual: target audience, personas, customization, personalization, and (to come) AI-driven individualization…" https://jakobnielsenphd.substack.com/p/individualizing-ux Comparison Tables for Products, Services, and Features By Kate Moran and Taylor Dykes. "Use this versatile GUI tool to support users when they need to make a decision that involves considering multiple attributes of a small number of items." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/comparison-tables/ Transactional Notification 101 (Video) By Feifei Liu. "Transactional notifications are concise, timely messages related to customer-company interactions. For effective notifications, it's crucial to have a clear subject line, provide all necessary transaction details, and ensure easy options for users to unsubscribe." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/transactional-notification/ 13 QR-Code Usability Guidelines By Tanner Kohler. "To be effective, QR codes need clear, brief, contextual information and must lead the user to relevant pages. " https://www.nngroup.com/articles/qr-code-guidelines/ Keeping Information Up to Date By Gerry McGovern. "…Not keeping Web content up to date does a huge disservice to the people who depend on you and come to your website thinking that they can trust what they read there." https://gerrymcgovern.com/keeping-information-up-to-date/ +09: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. We've Improved Our Ethical Screening Policy By Tom Greenwood. "…last year we took on some work that some people in our team felt we shouldn't have done. It led to some fascinating (and at times heated) debate…As a result of this challenging situation, I promised that we would update the screening policy…" https://www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/updated-ethical-screening-policy/ New and Improved Green Web Hosting Directory from the Green Web Foundation By Michelle Barker. "The Green Web Foundation has recently redesigned their green web hosting directory…" https://css-irl.info/new-and-improved-green-web-hosting-directory/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? Accessibility Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/accessibility.html Association Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/associations.html Book Listings. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/books.html Cascading Style Sheets Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/css.html Color Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/color.html Drupal Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/drupal.html Evaluation & Testing Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/testing.html Event Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/events.html HTML Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/html.html Information Architecture Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/architecture.html JavaScript Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/javascript.html Miscellaneous Web Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/misc.html Navigation Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/navigation.html PHP Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/php.html Sites & Blogs Listing. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/sites.html Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/standards.html Tool Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/tools.html Typography Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/type.html Usability Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/usability.html WebWaste & Sustainability Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/webwaste.html XML Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/xml.html [Section two ends.] ++END NOTES. + SUBSCRIPTION INFO. WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/webdev_listserv.html The Web Design Reference Site also has a RSS 2.0 feed for site updates. + TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN). As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) guidelines. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN guideline information please visit: http://www.headstar.com/ten + SIGN OFF. Until next time, Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009 mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]