+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 12, Issue 02, July 3, 2013. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 02 CONTENTS. SECTION ONE: New references. What's new at the Web Design Reference site? http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/ New links in these categories: 01: ACCESSIBILITY. 02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: COLOR. 04: DRUPAL. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: HTML5. 08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 09: JAVASCRIPT. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: PHP. 12: USABILITY. 13: XML. SECTION TWO: 14: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accreditation and Web Accessibility - Why Should Accreditors Care? By The National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE). "Equitable access to higher education has long been recognized as a challenge experienced by many individuals, including those from racial and ethnic groups, women, students from low socioeconomic status and students with disabilities. Today, many of the barriers that have historically limited these students' ability to succeed have been removed or reduced..." http://ncdae.org/goals/accreditation/accreditation.php Accessible User Experience and W3C-WAI By David Sloan. "Building an optimally accessible web site involves creating a technical platform that is as robust as possible under different browsing situations, including diverse assistive technology/browser combinations. Following the technical guidelines published by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an important part of this process. However, the ultimate focus of people with disabilities, like any other member of your target audience, is not simply to visit a technically accessible web site but to successfully use the site to reach a desired goal - which might be to complete a task, or achieve a particular experience (even if it is just to pass some time!)..." http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2013/06/accessible-user-experience-and-w3c-wai/ Choosing an Automated Accessibility Testing Tool - 13 Questions You Should Ask By Karl Groves. "I gave a presentation on this topic at this year's CSUN Conference on Disabilities. Due to the popularity of that session, I figured I'd share the salient points in a blog post. The below information is mostly relevant for organizations who are in the market for an enterprise level accessibility testing tool along the lines of Compliance Sheriff, AMP, Worldspace, and so on. I do not market an accessibility testing tool and have no pecuniary interest in any company which does. I make no recommendations in this post, as that isn't the point. The important part is that the reader become informed of the important factors to consider when choosing such a product. Here are 13 questions to ask yourself when choosing between competing products." http://www.karlgroves.com/2013/06/28/choosing-an-automated-accessibility-testing-tool-13-questions-you-should-ask/ 'Can't Someone Read that to You?' Dissolving Stereotypes of Blindness By Lainey Feingold. "On June 25, 2013, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), an agency of the United Nations, reached agreement on an historic document designed to provide access to reading materials for people who are blind or have other print disabilities. The draft WIPO treaty changes copyright law to reflect that blind people need formats other than standard print in order to read. These alternative formats, or accessible formats, include Braille, audio, Large Print, accessible web content and other accessible electronic documents. The lack of accessible, available formats, and not blindness, is why blind people cannot read huge swaths of information available in standard print format..." http://lflegal.com/2013/06/blind-privacy/ Weight Watchers Print and Digital Accessibility Settlement Agreement By The Law Office of Lainey Feingold. Posted here is the settlement agreement between Weight Watchers, the American Council of the Blind, and blind Weight Watchers members Alice Ritchhart and Lillian Scaife. The agreement demonstrates Weight Watchers' strong commitment to digital accessibility for its members and subscribers who are blind and visually impaired. Weight Watchers will be using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA as the standard for its online and mobile application content, and will be providing print material in accessible formats for persons with visual impairments who cannot read standard print. Weight Watchers worked on this initiative in Structured Negotiations with the American Council of the Blind and individual blind Weight Watchers members. http://lflegal.com/2013/06/weight-watchers-agreement/ Practitioners Rally To Defend Web Access Guidelines By Tristan Parker. "Accessibility practitioners have defended the international standard 'WCAG' web content accessibility guidelines this month, in the wake of an academic study suggesting they were 'ineffective'..." http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=897 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Architectures - Completing MetaCoax Refactoring By Denise Jacobs. "Taming CSS that's gone wild is no easy task. If you've studied any of the top scalable and modular CSS architectures, you may have been simultaneously overjoyed at finding the cause of your team's CSS woes, yet intimidated by the prospect of how to initiate getting the suggested changes into your documents and workflow..." http://www.sitepoint.com/css-architectures-completing-metacoax-refactoring/ +03: COLOR. 108 Million Web Users Are Color Blind - How Do They See Your Website? By EyeQuant. "In this article, we'll speak about color blindness and why it matters to your website optimization strategy Ð and your users..." http://blog.eyequant.com/2013/07/02/108-million-web-users-are-color-blind-how-do-they-see-your-website/ +04: DRUPAL. Feedback Needed - Drupal Accessibility Testing Script By Jesse Beach. "Please take a moment to review the testing plan assembled by Dharmesh and Terrill..." https://groups.drupal.org/node/306028 Drupal Administration Explained By Stephen Burge. A chapter from "Drupal 7 Explained: Your Step-by-Step Guide" is avaiable http://www.informit.com/store/drupal-7-explained-your-step-by-step-guide-9780133124231 +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Art of Guerilla Usability Testing By David Simon. "Guerrilla usability testing is a powerful technique. Designer Martin Belam describes it as 'the art of pouncing on lone people in cafes and public spaces, [then] quickly filming them whilst they use a website for a couple of minutes.' Let's skip the pouncing part and instead focus on its subtleties, including how to obtain and share feedback with our team..." http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/the-art-of-guerilla-usability-testing/ Measuring User Confidence in Usability Tests By Jeff Sauro. "Are you sure you did that right? When we put the effort into making a purchase online, finding information or attempting tasks in software we want to know we're doing things right. Having confidence in our actions and the outcomes is an important part of the user experience. That's why we ask users how confident they are that they completed a task in a usability test or a tree test. To measure confidence we use the following seven-point rating scale..." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/measuring-confidence.php +06: EVENTS. Open Web Camp V July 13, 2013. San Jose, California, U.S.A. http://openwebcamp.com/ DenverUX Boot Camp September 25-27, 2013. Denver, Colorado, U.S.A. http://www.denverux.com/ Future of Web Design October 7-9 2013. New York, New York, U.S.A. http://futureofwebdesign.com/nyc-2013/ Full Frontal 2013 November 8, 2013. Brighton, England, United Kingdom http://2013.full-frontal.org/ An Event Apart San Francisco December 9-11, 2013. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://archive.aneventapart.com/2013/sanfrancisco/ +07: HTML5 Resources for the New HTML template Element By Virginia DeBolt. "In draft state at the W3C, the new