+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 12, Issue 06, August 1, 2013. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 06 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: JAVASCRIPT. 08: TOOLS. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Regarding DOJ Settlement with Louisiana Tech University Concerning Inaccessible Course Materials By Ahead.org. "...the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a settlement agreement with Louisiana Tech University resolving a complaint about inaccessible course materials. The DOJ's summary of the obligation sends a clear message...What does this mean for our campuses?..." http://ahead.org/DOJ_Louisiana_Tech_Settlement Louisiana Tech U. Settles With U.S. Over Claims That It Violated Disabilities Act By Nick DeSantis. "Louisiana Tech University will pay a student a total of $23,543 in damages and make its Web sites and course materials more accessible in order to resolve allegations that it violated the Americans With Disabilities Act, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Tuesday..." http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/louisiana-tech-u-settles-with-u-s-over-claims-that-it-violated-disabilities-act-2/63583 Faculty Member Says "HELP - I can't tag my PDF articles" By Cyndi Rowland. "...There are many ways for non-technical people to determine if the PDF they wish to make accessible contains true text. Here are two ideas I shared with her and both were easy for her to implement. First, I asked her to see if she could select and copy some portion of text, and second I told her to try to search for some text element on the page. Both were successful strategies for her to determine which pages she could, and could not tag. Getting focus directly onto the text is critical if you will add an element to it (e.g., Header, ordered list)..." http://ncdae.org/blog/i-cant-tag-my-pdf-articles/ About Carousels and ARIA Tabs By Dennis Lembree. "...If you absolutely must implement a carousel, here are some design/interaction tips..." http://www.webaxe.org/carousels-and-aria-tabs/ Techniques for Labeling Standard HTML Form Controls By Sailesh Panchang. "In this post, Sailesh gives detailed information about how to code standard HTML form controls, making sure they are correctly labelled for accessibility..." http://www.deque.com/techniques-labeling-standard-html-form-controls Jaws, IE and the Forms Region Bug By Leonie Watson. "There is an unusual problem with Jaws and Internet Explorer that causes the word 'region' to be announced before every field in a form. Fortunately there is a workaround until the problem itself is resolved..." http://tink.co.uk/2013/07/jaws-ie-the-forms-region-bug/ Learning to Love Headings in Microsoft Word By Jonathan Whiting. "Below I offer a few reasons why using true headings will make life easier not just for individuals with disabilities, but for you, the document creator..." http://ncdae.org/blog/love-headings/ Reporting on Your Web Accessibility Findings: It Can Be Easy Using the GOALS Tool By National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE). "...This resource will walk you through creating and understanding the structure of the Administrative Report. Actual reports are also provided as examples..." http://ncdae.org/resources/tips/reporting.php Tracking Web Accessibility Success By Karl Groves. "...Prioritization lends itself directly to the ability to track successes in our accessibility efforts..." http://www.karlgroves.com/2013/07/30/tracking-web-accessibility-success/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Bookmarklets for Accessibility Testing By Zoe Mickley Gillenwater. "I've created two simple bookmarklets to reveal whether CSS background images are being used in an inaccessible way on a page..." http://zomigi.com/blog/bookmarklets-for-accessibility-testing/ Failure of Success Criterion 1.1.1 due to using CSS to include images that convey important information By W3C WCAG. "Text alternatives are necessary for people who cannot see images that convey important information. Therefore, it is a failure to use this property to add images to convey important information. This failure would apply equally in a case where the background image was declared in the HTML style attribute, as well as in a case where the background image declaration was created dynamically in a client script..." http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/F3.html When Do Elements Take the Focus? By James Edwards. "...you should never prevent elements from taking the focus, nor should you remove focus indication when the user Tabs to an element (unless of course you replace it with something else)...." http://www.sitepoint.com/when-do-elements-take-the-focus/ CSS3 Transition Property Basics By Craig Buckler. "In the second part in this series about CSS3 transitions, we'll take a detailed look at the properties. But first, we need to know what can and cannot be animated..." http://www.sitepoint.com/css3-transition-properties/ +03: COLOR. What's With All the Gray? By John Brandt. "...combining gray on white is not a good combination when it comes to reading or viewing web content or applications. Add to this the penchant to now use a pastel variant of blue for links and highlights, and we have significant issues with visual perception..." http://jebswebs.net/blog/2013/07/whats-with-all-the-gray/ Contrast Rebellion By Zoltan Gocza and Richard Gazdik. "...Look at these websites. They look fabulous indeed but how good is that if people can't read them?..." http://contrastrebellion.com/ +04: DRUPAL. Twin Cities Drupal Camp Accessibility Testing, Discussions and Sprinting By Jesse Beach. "On Friday, July 19th, 2013, two usability tests were conducted in the labs of the University of Minnesota...Executive takeaways from testing: Drupal is not as accessible as we even dared to hope. Content creation is painful and at points impossible for a non-sighted user. Something as fundamental as the content creation process should present the least number of barriers. Most of the issues encountered stemmed from interface issues such as the inaccessible structure of the Overlay module. Form validation errors are invisible to a non-sighted user..." https://www.acquia.com/blog/twin-cities-drupal-camp-accessibility-testing-discussions-and-sprinting +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Three Questions You Shouldn't Ask During User Research By Jared Spool. "The participant was struggling. While he was a high-volume customer who had bought tons from this site in the past, today he wasn't getting along with the checkout process. Confusion happened in both directions: the shopper didn't understand what the site was trying to tell him and the site definitely didn't understand what he wanted..." http://www.uie.com/articles/three_questions_not_to_ask/ +06: EVENTS. Accessibility Summit September 10-11, 2013. Online. http://environmentsforhumans.com/2013/accessibility-summit/ Mobile UX September 12, 2013. Online. http://environmentsforhumans.com/2013/mobile-ux-summit/ Generate Conference September 13, 2013. London, England, United Kingdom http://www.generateconf.com/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Make Your Widgets Sing with ARIA By Jason Kiss. Jason's WDCNZ presentation sides. http://accessibleculture.org/research-files/WDCNZ-25July2013/make-your-widgets-sing-with-aria.html A Meta Style Guide for JavaScript By Axel Rauschmayer. "...this blog post describes commonly accepted meta style rules and conventions that I like that are controversial. The idea is to help you make a more informed decision about what is right for you..." http://www.2ality.com/2013/07/meta-style-guide.html The classList API By Derek Johnson. "I have to be honest with you: I feel like a fraud writing about JavaScript for HTML5 Doctor..." http://html5doctor.com/the-classlist-api/ +08: TOOLS. Outline CSS Background Images and Remove CSS Background Images Bookmarklets By Zoe Mickley Gillenwater. "One bookmarklet outlines elements that have a background image set, and the other removes all background images. The idea is to use either or both of these to see whether any of the informational images on the page have been set as CSS background images instead of foreground images (the element in the HTML). This is an accessibility problem, since CSS background images can't have alt text to explain the information contained within them. Background images should be reserved for either purely decorative images or informative images that repeat information found elsewhere in the text..." http://zomigi.com/demo/background-images_remove_outline.html +09: TYPOGRAPHY. Text Re-Sizing By Rakesh Paladugula. "...To ensure that the text can be resized accurately without loss or functionality, the units of measurements should be determined in relative size...." http://www.maxability.co.in/2013/07/text-re-sizing/ +10: USABILITY. There are Two Important Points on Every List By David Anderson. "Lists. They're tremendously popular. Web writing experts tell us to break out any content that could be considered a list. List are so important to web content that they have their own html elements..." http://www.attentionmessageaction.com/there-are-two-important-points-on-every-list/ What Will We Build on a Foundation of Flat Design? By Steven Bradley. "Over the last few years web designers have been returning to fundamentals. Focus has shifted from skeuomorphic details like reflections to the basics of type, layout, and color. Much of this shift can be seen in the recent trend of flat design, which I think signals a new foundation for web designers. The question I want to address today is what will we build on top of that foundation?.." http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/building-on-flat-design-foundation/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? Accessibility Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/accessibility.html Association Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/associations.html Book Listings. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/books.html Cascading Style Sheets Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/css.html Color Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/color.html Dreamweaver Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/dreamweaver.html Evaluation & Testing Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/testing.html Event Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/events.html Flash Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/flash.html Information Architecture Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/architecture.html JavaScript Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/javascript.html Miscellaneous Web Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/misc.html Navigation Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/navigation.html PHP Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/php.html Sites & Blogs Listing. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/sites.html Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/standards.html Tool Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/tools.html Typography Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/type.html Usability Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/usability.html XML Information. http://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: http://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.]