+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 12, Issue 15, October 4, 2013. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 15 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 03: EVENTS. 04: JAVASCRIPT. 05: NAVIGATION. 06: TYPOGRAPHY. 07: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 08: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Images are Already About Accessibility By Megan Erin Miller. "...Images can greatly improve the accessibility of your site's content, but we need to be careful to make our images accessible to everyone by including appropriate alternative text, long descriptions, and making sure they use appropriate color contrast. I hope this post has been a helpful introduction to understanding some of the accessibility considerations you should balance when adding an image to your site. At the very least, I hope the alt text decision tree can be a useful tool! Remember, it's better to do a little bit than nothing at all, so if you're feeling overwhelmed, just start with the small stuff." https://swsblog.stanford.edu/blog/imagery-101-image-accessibility Some Thoughts on Automated Web Accessibility Testing By Karl Groves. "...It means that we need to use it wisely. We need to apply the tool at the right time and for the right reasons. We need to understand its limitations and capabilities and use them in a manner that exploits the capabilities as efficiently as possible. At that point, automation will be viewed as the vital part of the developer's toolset that it should be." http://www.karlgroves.com/2013/09/29/some-thoughts-on-automated-web-accessibility-testing/ How to Prepare for Web Accessibility Before the Government Forces Your Hand By Chris Minnick and Ed Tittel. "The Department of Justice has been delaying Web accessibility updates to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for years, but 2013 may be when it finally happens. If your business already follows existing accessibility guidelines, little will change. If you don't, this article sorts out what you will likely have to do..." http://www.cio.com/article/739512/How_to_Prepare_for_Web_Accessibility_Before_the_Government_Forces_Your_Hand +02: EVALUATION & TESTING. What Goes into a Usability Test Plan? By Jeff Sauro. "A usability test plan should not only lay out the framework of the study, but also help identify problems with the methodology, metrics or tasks while something can still be done to fix things. This blog describes the common sections we use." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/usability-test-plan.php +03: EVENTS. JavaScript Accessibility Summit October 10-11, 2013. Herndon, Virginia, U.S.A. http://www.deque.com/deque-partners-jquery-create-accessibility-summit Web Accessibility Training January 14-15, 2014. Logan, Utah, U.S.A. http://webaim.org/training/ +04: JAVASCRIPT. Make Your Widgets Sing With Aria (Video) By Jason Kiss. Jason's presentation. http://vimeo.com/73427435 Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.1 W3C First Public Working Draft 26 September 2013 http://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.1/ Tips For Using Window in JavaScript By Axel Rauschmayer. "In web browsers, window refers to an object that contains the global variables. This blog post explains how it works and when to use it." http://www.2ality.com/2013/09/window.html +05: NAVIGATION. Four Dangerous Navigation Approaches that Can Increase Cognitive Strain By Jen Cardello. "Some navigation implementations risk pushing users into a state of cognitive strain which lessens the likelihood of them taking desirable actions." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/navigation-cognitive-strain/ Learning From Mobile Navigation By Paul Boag. "Should we learn a lesson from mobile web design and apply minimalistic navigation to larger screen websites?" http://boagworld.com/usability/learning-from-mobile-navigation/ +06: TYPOGRAPHY. Support a User's Ability to Resize Text By Elle Waters. "In this week's Best Practice of the Week (BPOW), we examine the best ways to provide help for users who need to resize the text on your web pages in order to read the content more easily." http://simplyaccessible.com/bpow/resize-text/ +07: USABILITY. User Expertise Stagnates at Low Levels By Jakob Nielsen. "Learning is hard work, and users don't want to do it; they don't explore the user interface and don't know about most features." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/stagnating-expertise/ User-Centric vs. Maker-Centric Language - 3 Essential Guidelines By Janelle Estes. "To engage users, website copy must speak to readers and not at them. Include words people can relate to, and avoid jargon, business speak, and feature-driven language." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/user-centric-language/ Users Don't Hate Change, They Hate You By Christina Wodtke. "Change is expensive, even when it's free. Change is expensive in relearning. Change is expensive when you feel like you no longer have a choice in how you live your life. For change to be accepted, it needs to first have real value to the user." http://www.eleganthack.com/user-dont-hate-change-they-hate-you/ Mobile Design Details - Avoid The Spinner By Luke Wroblewski. "Conventional wisdom tells us that when things are going to take a while, we should let people know. In most mobile applications that translates to adding progress bars or spinners when something is happening or loading. While the intentions behind these progress indicators are good, the end result can actually turn out to be bad..." http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1797 Performance Matters By Jatinder Mann. "While a decade ago it may have been okay to go brew a pot of coffee while the computer was loading, today we all expect our software and devices to be fast and responsive. The same holds true for web performance. The load speed and responsiveness of a web application play a critical role in our choice of which applications we want to use. At the same time, how efficiently software runs plays a critical role in device battery life. No one wants to be carrying around a brick." http://alistapart.com/column/performance-matters [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +08: 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.]